2,000x faster broadband promised by Welsh scientists

Would you like to download 20 movies in a single second? That's the promise of a new broadband technology which could make your Internet 2,000 times faster -- and all at the same cost as today.

OCEAN is a project to split lasers to carry more information down fibre-optic lines. It's being developed by scientists at Bangor University in Wales, who specialise in telecoms technology and cool acronyms.

OCEAN's developer Professor Jianming Tang promises "downloading and uploading speeds up to 2,000 times faster than current speeds and with a guaranteed quality of services at a price that subscribers are currently paying for their current 20Mbps services, regardless of subscribers' home location".

These head-spinning speeds are accomplished using Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, which has the slightly less wieldy abbreviation OOFDM. OOFDM splits a single laser into different optical frequencies, with data broken up and sent in parallel streams down the fibre-optic line on the different frequencies.

The technology uses current cabling, so doesn't require digging up your road to turboboost your Web use. Using existing infrastructure also prevents the cost from shooting up, and it uses less power to boot. 

Ocean has cost more than £2m, is backed by the European Union and assorted telecoms partners, including Fujitsu.

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