The loop plant is the only part of the telephone network that has stayed structurally almost the same for the best part of a century. Due to the increasing demand for broadband services, the time has come for a powerful upgrade of the entire outside loop plant, which includes upgrading the network to optical fibre. Initial provisioning of new services (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and High-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line (HDSL)) will have to take place on the existing loop plant, because of the high costs associated with optic fibre for the so-called 'last mile'. Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL) paves the way to a total fibre solution, introducing a hybrid copper/fibre solution for delivering high speed broadband services up to 52 Mbps asymmetric and 26 Mbps symmetric.
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