Much Faster Broadband Coming Soon?

Source: Om Malik on Broadband ? 25 MBPS DSL By Fall… It Can Happen.

2Wire, which is one of the main suppliers of boring stuff like DSL modems to the likes of SBC has just announced a new gateway, 2000 Series, which has an ADSL2/2+ modem chip built into the box. ADSL2+ is a DSL technology doubles the downstream bandwidth, increasing the downstream data rate to as much as 25 Mbps.

In addition the company announced that it will do remote software upgrades of all its boxes - over 2.5 million - already deployed to handle ADSL2/2+ speeds. It has some other features - integrated Voice over IP ports (including support for VoWiFI via built in WiFi), and a USB 2.0 port that will also enable expansion applications. The company says it can do wireline/wireless convergence on this little gateway, a feature both Cingular owners - SBC and BellSouth have expressed an interest in. (Full laundry list of features, here!) Right now the gateway is being beat-up in the labs and normally it is put through stress tests by the carriers for about 90 days. And another 90 days before it starts shipping in volume.