Page being revised, please check again for more up to date information - (18th March 2008)

The future drivers on the core asymmetrical and symmetrical technologies will remain unchanged. The enhancements to date have delayed the introduction of Very High Data Rate DSL (VDSL) and the inevitable movement of DSLAMs closer to the customer. Standardisation activities will continue to focus on reach, bandwidth and copper bonding improvements whilst chip vendors will provide further levels of integration. This enabling increased port density, lower component count and power consumption and hence reduction in cost per port. The next extension for ADSL2 is ADSL2 Annex L, reach-extended ADSL2 (RE-ADSL2) driven out of the need for further reach. It was “technically frozen” January 2003 with formal approval in October 2003. Based on the “technical frozen” status chipset vendors have commenced development of silicon solutions with first products expected Q2 2004. On reach extension it gives 914m at 768kbit/s downstream when compared with ADSL

IEEE 802.3ah (Ethernet in the First Mile - EFM) is addressing 10Mbit/s symmetric transport in the local access network. In this project, the EFM copper sub-task force have agreed the use of VDSL for the short reach objective of 10Mbit/s transport at 750m, with G.SHDSL for long reach 2Mbit/s transport at 2700m. Similarly, in T1E1.4, there is a project called M2DSL (formerly known as 10MDSL) that addresses multi-rate multi-pair symmetric high-speed DSL that will support bit rates up to at least 10 Mb/s symmetric on short loops decreasing to lower rates on longer loops. Early discussions have commenced on G.SHDSL bis also known as enhanced SHDSL (eSHDSL). The ITU have agreed a rate of 5.7Mbit/s over a single pair, issues still remain on whether loop bonding should be physical, Inverse Multiplexing over ATM or at a packet level. It is anticipated that the above the standards programs should see first silicon by early 2005.