VON: BellSouth plans major VDSL2 upgrade

BOSTON--BellSouth will upgrade many of the shorter loops in its fiber-to-the-curb network to VDSL2 over the next two years, delivering about 80 Mb/s to the home, according to a report this week from Investor’s Business Daily.

Starting in the second half 2007 and occurring mostly in 2008, BellSouth will upgrade 1.35 million homes to VDSL2, IBD said. Most of these homes are in suburbs across the Southeast, and all of them are already within 250 feet of fiber. In addition, BellSouth may deploy VDSL2 in multidwelling units where it’s economically beneficial to do so.

The news comes as BellSouth is merging with AT&T, which is deploying a somewhat different architecture, fiber-to-the-node. BellSouth’s VDSL2 plans are subject to change following the change of management, the carrier told IBD. However, in a research note issued Wednesday, Lehman Brothers analyst Marcus Kupferschmidt wrote, “We find it strange that BellSouth would make these comments and inform state regulators of the upgrade plans if the intentions were not real.”

In a presentation to Telephony’s IPTV Workshop program at the VON trade show in Boston this week, Peter Hill, BellSouth’s vice president of technology planning and deployment, said the company “has always been on a path to add VDSL2.” He cited the planned introduction of that technology to Alcatel’s 7330 DSLAM in the second half of 2007 and to Tellabs’ 1150 for trials in this year’s fourth quarter, with general availability in the first half of 2007.

“[VDSL2] is great for shorter loops,” Hill said.