It seems like at least twice a year, an engineer or company finds an innovative new way of milking some additional bandwidth out of copper -- though you'll note that none of these technologies ever see mass-market implementation. The latest, as explored by PC World, quotes Ericsson as saying they're developing new vectorized DSL technology capable of 500Mbps "soon." Ericsson says they're using six copper pairs to obtain these speeds at 500 meters, though they admit that extra pairs often aren't available at many locations -- and that fiber will still be a better bet in many situations:Ericsson also admits that you may as well go with fiber where "finacially viable." Keep in mind we're still waiting for mass hardware that supports even two bonded pair regular VDSL2 -- something AT&T hopes to use to offer U-Verse speeds faster than 18Mbps at longer loop lengths.