wiredinUSA August 2014

Old copper – new speed

New cable-laying Nexus

Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs division claims to have reached 10Gbps using only traditional copper wiring. The technology, called XG-FAST, is a development of the G.fast standard, currently under review by the International Telecommunications Union. The G.fast specification calls for a spectrum range of 106MHz – far larger than that used by existing DSL technology. Effectively, G.fast can send or receive data much faster than conventional DSL, but only over short distances, around 100m. XG-FAST uses 500MHz of spectrum range, further increasing transmission speed and limiting usable distance. Bell Labs said in a statement that the 10Gbps mark was reached using two pairs of copper cable lines, over a distance of 30m. A further experiment, using a single copper pair, achieved 1Gbps over 70m. Bell Labs plans to use the technology as a last-few-feet connection. The previous claim for world record speed over copper was 825Mbps, set by Nokia Siemens Networks in 2010.

Damen Shipyards Galati has launched Van Oord’s new DP2 cable-laying vessel, Nexus, which will be deployed to install electricity cables for offshore wind farms. The 123m long vessel has been designed to accommodate 90 people and features a 28m beam, a dynamic positioning system (DP2), a 5,000t capacity cable carousel and a heavy crane for laying heavy-export cables. The design of the Nexus is based on the Damen Offshore Carrier 7500, a multi-purpose vessel suited for heavy-lift or roll-on/roll-off transport and offshore installations. Van Oord was awarded a €1.3 billion EPC contract earlier this year for the 600MW Gemini offshore wind project, located 55km to the north of the island of Schiermonnikoog, Netherlands.

wiredInUSA - August 2014

30