If you thought your broadband was fast (or disappointingly slow), you ain't seen nothing yet. An Australian PhD graduate has invented a way to turbo-charge current ADSL broadband speeds, making them up to 200 times faster.
The system uses new algorithms to reduce the effect that cross chatter has on internet streams that share the same physical copper telephone line.
Using his new algorithm, Dr. John Papandriopoulos says existing telecoms infrastructure could serve broadband speeds of up to 250Mbps. The majority of ADSL customers in the UK get less than 8Mbps.
Using these dramatically increased download speeds, internet users would be able to download data at a rate of around 30MB every second. To put this in perspective, you could download a DVD movie in less than three minutes.
Fastest internet speeds
Papandriopoulos has applied for patents in the US and Australia to implement these new algorithms into worldwide internet servers. And one thing's for sure, if this all turns out to be a legitimate upgrade, Papandriopoulos will be hot property among the world's ISPs.
Again, if this technology is adopted, it could mean that plans to install fibreoptic cables alongside copper cable networks would be scrapped, or at the very least delayed, saving billions of pounds.
Dramatically faster broadband would undoubtedly accelerate the introduction of audio and video download stores. It could even impact the long-term prospects of the high-definition Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Why do you need an expensive Blu-ray disc, if you can order up the same movie online and get it piped into your living room?
The proof is in the numbers. A 250Mbps data rate would theoretically enable you to download:
- A DVD movie in 2 minutes 30 seconds
- A 50GB Blu-ray movie in 28 minutes
- The entire Wikipedia site in half an hour
- 10,000 MP3 music albums in five hours
