Early DSL service required a dedicated dry loop

Early DSL service required a dedicated dry loop, but when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required ILECs to lease their lines to competing DSL service providers, shared-line DSL became available. Also known as DSL over Unbundled Network Element, this unbundling of services allows a single subscriber to receive two separate services from two separate providers on one cable pair.

The DSL service provider's equipment is co-located in the same central office as that of the ILEC supplying the customer's pre-existing voice service. The subscriber's circuit is then rewired to interface with hardware supplied by the ILEC which combines a DSL frequency and POTS frequency on a single copper pair facility.

On the subscriber's end of the circuit, inline low-pass DSL filters (splitters) are installed on each telephone to filter the high-frequency "hiss" that would otherwise be heard, but pass voice (5 kHz and below) frequencies. Conversely, high-pass filters already incorporated in the circuitry of DSL modems filter out voice frequencies. Although ADSL and RADSL modulations do not use the voice-frequency band, nonlinear elements in the phone could otherwise generate audible intermodulation and may impair the operation of the data modem in the absence of low-pass filters.

Older ADSL standards delivered 8 Mbit/s to the customer over about 2 km (1.2 mi) of unshielded twisted-pair copper wire. Newer variants improved these rates. Distances greater than 2 km (1.2 mi) significantly reduce the bandwidth usable on the wires, thus reducing the data rate. ADSL loop extenders increase these distances substantially.

December 14, 2011

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