Belgacom, the Belgian telco giant, is boosting the performance of its triple-play network as part of a joint-development program with Alcatel-Lucent. Belgacom says its customers will get guaranteed speeds of 50Mbps by 2014 due to the introduction of VDSL2 vectoring.
Belgacom offers television and high-speed Internet services to 1 million customers. The current 78.9 percent national VDSL2 coverage, progressing to 85 percent by the end of 2013, makes Belgium one of the world’s leading broadband nations in fiber networks.
VDSL2 uses the existing copper network that was originally intended for the POTS. It’s considered the newest and most advanced standard of DSL broadband. Belgacom expects to be able to offer more advanced services in the future.
“Our continuous network modernization over the years has positioned Belgium among the leading broadband nations in the world," said Scott Alcott, executive VP, Service Delivery Engine at Belgacom. “Together with the expertise of Alcatel-Lucent, we continue to deploy innovative solutions to leverage our existing copper infrastructure in a fast and cost-effective way, delivering a higher quality broadband experience to our subscribers. This latest phase in our collaboration will play a major role in meeting the European Digital Agenda 2020 goals."
Alcatel-Lucent says it’s the first vendor in the market to support customer trials of VDSL2 Vectoring, which have demonstrated the ability to increase data speeds dramatically. VDSL2 Vectoring technology, available in the fourth quarter of 2011 on ALU’s broadband access platform, offers the capability of copper to support data speeds up to 100 Mbps and beyond.
