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History of Telecommunications T-Carrier

Few aspects of commercial telecommunications have quite the allure of the T-carrier. Well, to me, at least, but then I have very specific interests.

Low install cost and convenience means that they are the norm between a telephone exchange and its local callers, but for long-distance carriage over the phone network, you get far better results by splitting the "talk" and "listen" sides into two separate pairs. HDSL is older and slower than the newer ADSL and VDSL protocols, and requires four wires, but it was fast enough to carry a DS1 signal and could cover a much longer span than traditional T-carrier. In the modern world, DSL pretty much always refers to either ADSL or VDSL, newer protocols designed for consumer service that can coexist with a voice line and provide very high speeds.

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