First results of the 16/64 QAM XPIC trial in the Netherlands

A description of a 16/64 QAM XPIC trial in the Netherlands is given. Two 16/64 QAM co-channel pairs, one of which is equipped with XPICs, are monitored to obtain the performance improvement by XPICs. From measurements over two years it follows that a reduction in outage time (BER greater than 10^-3) of approximately 2 to 4 can be obtained for both 16 and 64 QAM modulation. XPICs also reduce the unavailable time considerably. Because part of the unavailable time is converted to severely errored seconds, the improvement factor in SES is somewhat lower than the reduction in outage time