TI Announces DSL Video Technology

Texas Instruments has unveiled a high-bandwidth DSL technology aimed at bringing video services, including HDTV, to consumers over telephone lines. Called Uni-DSL (UDSL), the TI approach involves fitting cross-connect boxes with the technology, which would enable video to be carried over copper wires to final consumer destinations.

TI said it expects to introduce its first UDSL solutions next year in anticipation of a wide roll out of the technology in 2006. The approach is an attempt to solve the nagging "last mile problem" of telecommunications; an overcapacity of fiber-optical networks crisscross the country, but are stalled in the final few miles to consumer locations because it's too expensive to install fiber to individual homes. TI proposes to solve the problem by installing its Uni-DSL technology in cross-connect boxes and placing receivers in consumers' homes.

In a statement, TI said: "The backwards compatibility of UDSL-based equipment will allow operators to affordably deploy a flexible menu of services using ADSL and VDSL standards from a single line-card design in the central office or residential gateway in the home. TI plans to take its vision of a universal DSL technology before the various standards organizations around the world to gain support for Uni-DSL technology."

TI indicated that the technology is likely to take off quicker in Europe and Asia than in the U.S., because bandwidth structure of short-loop transmission schemes in Europe and Asia generally can more easily be fitted with the technology. UDSL architecture supports rates of 200 Mbps aggregate on one line of DSL, which can be utilized to provide 100 Mbps symmetric; it can also provide an asymmetric service--such as 150 Mbps downstream, 50 Mbps upstream in shorter loops.