Now here’s a handy gadget: Largo, Florida-based AT&T Paradyne has announced GlobeSpan, a transmission tecnology that it claims will enable users to hold a phone conversation while simultaneously using the same copper phone line to view a live event on television, download high-definition multimedia files from the Internet to a personal computer, or receive movies on demand. Co-developed by AT&T Paradyne and AT&T Bell Laboratories, GlobeSpan is a transmission technology that uses the company’s Carrierless Amplitude and Phase modulation line coding techniques to provide concurrent transmission of both standard analogue speed signals and high-speed digital signals over copper wire. It will quadruple existing copper wire telephone networks’ transmission speeds to more than 6Mbps from 1.544Mbps T1 speed; 6Mbps will support live broadcast video and high-speed remote local area network access. At its heart is an integrated transceiver chip set that supports Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and High-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line applications. It is based on a digital chip, combined with an analogue chip to form an integrated Digital Subscriber Line transceiver. According to AT&T, the technology transmits high-speed digital data at bi-directional rates up to 2.0 48Mbps for HDSL applications while, for ADSL applications, it supports high-speed digital rates to a customer premise, together with a lower speed reverse channel rate up to 64Kbps. GlobeSpan is based on a flexible, programmable system that will enable future support for systems such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode transport and high-speed reverse channels of up to 640Kbps. The company is actively licensing the technology now. Current licensees include Hyundai Electronics Industries Ltd, US-based Quadraplex Inc and Schmid Telecom AG, Switzerland.
