Copper pair transmission: the trade-off between reach and capacity

A pure fibre network to every home seems some years away, because of the high capital investment and long time required to install new cables. So, for high data rate services, many telcos are considering hybrid networks of optical fibre and existing twisted copper pairs. The service data rate is then limited by the copper section. This paper discusses the information capacity available under the different architectures being proposed (ADSL/FTT cabinet/FTT kerb).