TV cables could provide broadband Internet access speeds up to a trouser-flapping 100 megabits per second as early as next year according to Finnish broadband equipment maker Teleste.
The technology is claimed to provide punters with access 50 times faster than the average broadband speeds now offered to cable TV homes.
Although similarly nippy data transmission speeds are possible over fibre networks, these would cost a lot more for operators to build.
“This is a cost-efficient technology, as we use the cable TV networks which are already in place,” Teleste’s CEO Jukka Rinnevaara told Reuters.
Teleste has said that it will bring its Ethernet-to-the-home product to the market early next year, giving consumers access to speeds of up to 100mbps.
The company manages to achieve the Billy Whizz speeds by fitting Ethernet – your everyday, cheapo technology for shifting Internet data over broadband networks – into cable television networks.
Teleste reckons it’s way ahead of the market, predicting that rival technologies won’t emerge until the second quarter of 2007 at the earliest.
The foxy Finns are currently running field trials with cable TV service provider Essent in the Netherlands, but are yet to reach the top speeds they predicts will be available to most homes in a few years time.
“Based on our research, 30 megabits per second is the absolute minimum in future homes,” Pekka Rissanen, a Teleste exec informed a news conference. “Just one TV programme would take 10 to 20 megabits per second of this alone. So, very fast we would reach a need for 30 megabits, and also for 50 megabits per second.”
Rissanen calculated the cost of connecting a home to the high speed ethernet-to-the-home technology could range from US$60.30 (~£35, ~€50) and US$241 (~£140, ~€200).
For some inexplicable reason, the company has splashed out a fortune for a bizarre, near feature-length futuristic 3D-tastic cartoon fronted by a talking monkey to explain their new service.
We’re not quite sure what the connection with the service is, but it sure beats listening to some swivel action suit blathering on via Power Point.