Ah - I think I'm qualified for this one
Yes - FTTC can go over 80Mbps in 3 different circumstances:
- Short distances to the cabinet - probably within 200 metres.
- Medium distances to the cabinet (between 400 and 500 metres), but with vectoring applied to remove crosstalk
- Longer distances with multiple pairs bonded together, probably alongside vectoring
Reading stuff about the recent suggestion that the Aussie NBN should consider FTTC, I saw
an article summarising the Openreach rollout. In there, Mike Gavin said that Vectoring would be deployed later in 2013.
There were no other details, in particular the headline packages that they're going to offer. But I suspect they'll be keen to match Virgin's offers.
Alcatel-Lucent have
a self-aggrandizing white paper on the current state of Vectoring/Bonding, with the more recent trials suggesting that 100Mbps is a straightforward goal to distances of 400 or 500 metres - presumably depending on matters such as the diameter of the copper used in the access network - and that 120Mbps may be possible to around 300 metres.
Of note is the fact that the more recent trials are getting better speeds out of vectoring, suggesting lessons are being learnt.
The use of Vectoring generally means that more people can get closer to the theoretical speed for their distance, giving Openreach a bit more licence to set a higher headline package. I was expecting them to set 100Mbps packages, rather than 120Mbps.
The use of bonding alongside vectoring can give speeds of 200Mbps out to 400 metres. I wonder if we'll ever see BT making use of this in a reasonable fashion, rather than with a BET-like kludge.