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Thanks to the efforts of the fine people at the New
Hope Telephone Cooperative, the areas of Grant, New Hope, and Owens
Crossroads continue to enjoy broadband internet connectivity via ADSL.
This vision started with the 3COM implementation a few years ago when NEHP was
the first to offer ADSL connectivity in Northern Alabama. But the people
at NEHP didn't stop there. NEHP furthered this vision by upgrading
the entire plant to offer the Alcatel implementation of ADSL. The 3COM
implementation was good for it's time, but the time is right for the Alcatel
solution. With this new Alcatel solution, NEHP can offer ADSL to
broader, if not all, areas of the New Hope Telephone Cooperative. The
Alcatel ADSL solution also allows for the use of many different manufacturers
modems, not just Alcatel.
Bob Gruis (now retired), Dewey
Doss, and Rusty Bright have my personal
thanks for this creation and continuance of this vision. Due to their
efforts, ADSL is a reality for the people of Grant, New Hope, and Owens
Crossroads. Many people are already enjoying ADSL in the NEHP area.
The upgrade of the plant continues at a feverish pace. This upgrade
is very complex as it involves the installation of a fiber optic ring
(completed) around the area and the replacement and addition of new Siemans
Remote Terminals as well as the programming at the Central Office (CO). It
is the replacement and additions of these new Remote Terminals that provides the
ADSL capability. If the Remote Terminal in your area has not been
replaced, be patient, it will be worth the wait. When all of the new
Remote Terminals have been replaced or added, all customers of Grant, New Hope
and Owens Crossroads will have the ability to receive broadband ADSL internet
connectivity.
You will find a general discussion of the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
below. More detailed information on the old Viper and new Alcatel modems that
have been and are being used respectively by the New
Hope Telephone Cooperative can be found at the links above.
The protocol standards requirement for modems connected to the NEHP ADSL Acatel
solution used today are G.DMT and/or G.LITE. Several customers are now using
both 3COM and Alcatel modems. The 3COM Viper will not work with the
current NEHP Alcatel based ADSL system as this modem was a predecessor to the
these standards.
The DSL technologies are based on a single pair of copper wires, the
same copper wires that are used for a normal Plain Old Telephone System (POTS)
telephone line. The difference is these wires must be connected directly
from a DSL adapter at the customers location to special equipment at the
Internet Service Provider's (ISP) location. This means the telephone wires
must bypass the SWITCH at the telephone providers location. This also
implies that a telephone line used for a DSL line is no longer a
"telephone" line.
Some DSL solutions use special POTS splitters installed at the customer's and ISP's
premises. These
splitters enable the ISPs location to also connect to a regular telephone
line and will give the customer the ability to use a regular POTS telephone to
receive and originate telephone calls over the same copper pair that also
provides the high bandwidth DSL connection to the internet at the same time.
There are many forms of this revolutionary technology. So many
in fact that it is being referred to in general terms as "xDSL".
Rate Adaptive Asymmetrical DSL (R-ADSL), simply called ADSL, can provide up to 8Mbps
bandwidth downstream and 1.5Mbps bandwidth upstream. In comparison, a T-1
line provides 1.544Mbps bandwidth both down and up stream. Most ISPs use
T-Spans for Internet connectivity.
R-ADSL is scalable by offering the ability to throttle the bandwidth
to a desired amount thus making it more affordable to the individual user.
And it provides significant growth for increased bandwidth in the future.
For instance, R-ADSL can be throttled down to 256Kbps, twice 128Kbps ISDN.
As bandwidth cost decreases, the R-ADSL adapter can be throttled up as needed.
In other words, you can buy more bandwidth without having to buy new equipment.
xDSL rate depends not only on the settings in the equipment, but also
the distance from the customer's premises to the ISP, specifically, the length
of copper wire. The longer the copper is, the lower the speed will be.
Typical DSL technology is limited to 18,000 feet copper wire length.
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