The Melbourne Herald Sun says that an Australian PhD student has devised a way of getting extra bandwidth out of copper. Dr John Papandriopoulos, who is waiting for patents to get processed on his technology, says it could provide speeds up to 250Mbps over traditional copper lines. The article, which offers scant technical specifics, says the technology "uses mathematic modeling to reduce the interference that slows down downloading."

"People have been trying to push up the speeds of broadband to as fast as possible by pushing the actual bandwidth limits," Papandriopoulos tells Image and Data Manager Online. "The underlying problem is really one of interference, in effect your neighbor is interfering with your speed," he said. A bit more from the report:We're trying to contact Papandriopoulos for more information on his research, though you can find one of his earlier papers on the new algorithm here (pdf). A longer list of his research is available here. Papandriopoulos, who won an award this week from the University of Melbourne for his research, is apparently working with Stanford Professor John Cioffi to sell the technology in the U.S.