Alcatel-Lucent received the Broadband InfoVision Award in the “Broadband Innovation of the Year” category for its DSL Phantom Mode breakthrough.

Leveraging DSL Phantom Mode, Alcatel-Lucent has shown downstream speeds of 390 Mbps over distances up to 400 meters using two copper pairs, commonly available in residential deployments. By adding more pairs, even higher speeds can be obtained (for instance, 910 Mbps at 400 meters using four pairs – which means more than 1Gbps upstream and downstream combined). The availability of more than two copper pairs is particularly relevant in business services environments, and to support mobile backhaul.

“I congratulate Alcatel-Lucent with this Broadband Innovation of the Year award - a clear recognition for the innovation Alcatel-Lucent is continuing to integrate in their products. Boosting bitrates on the DSL copper plant is key to Belgacom''s strategy to deliver very high-speed broadband services to our subscribers." Belgacom deploys Alcatel-Lucent's IP access nodes as part of its BelgacomTV service.

Jürgen Lison, Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent's Wireline activities, accepted the award on behalf of Alcatel-Lucent and said, “It is great to see the enthusiasm of our customers and the broadband market as a whole for our DSL Phantom Mode technology. Based on the results of our first deployments and customer trials, we are convinced of the real-life performance improvements that technologies such VDSL2 Bonding, Vectoring and potentially Phantom Mode will bring to VDSL-based broadband networks around the world.”