The CopperOptics Story

Years ago, telephone companies saw the realities. They had mile after mile of copper cable, they knew the logistical and cost ramifications of fiber limited its deployment, and they recognized the flaws of repeatered T1/E1. So they started looking for a better way to transmit information, and in the late 1980s the collective research arm of the Bell operating companies, Bellcore, devised a new method.

HDSL (High-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line) is an innovation that bridges the gap between copper cable and fiber optics, via a process that PairGain Technologies—the industry leader—calls CopperOptics . Essentially, it leverages the huge investment in copper cable plants by enabling pristine signal transmission (fiber optic quality) over existing copper cable at speeds of up to multiple megabits per second. Used for public network access and in private campus area networks, HDSL uses sophisticated electronics at either end of the copper cable to elegantly send information over copper wire. By using existing cable and inexpensive electronics, HDSL can be implemented quickly (virtually in hours) and without the excessive labor charges required to run fiber optic cable or implement repeatered T1. With the abundance of copper cable throughout the world the application of HDSL is limitless.

PairGain, CopperOptics and products such as Campus-REX^(tm) make the promise of HDSL technology real.