Gigabit DSL (with a fiber boost) to hit market next year
G.fast broadband standard approved, products to be certified in mid-2015.
by Jon Brodkin
Ars Technica
Dec 5 2014, 11:20am CST
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/gigabit-dsl-with-a-fiber-boost-to-hit-market-next-year/
A DSL standard that combines fiber and copper to reach gigabit speeds
was approved today by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
G.fast promises fiber-like speeds without fiber to the home.
The next step for the new G.fast standard is certifying chipsets and
equipment. To that end, the Broadband Forum industry consortium is
holding a plugfest in January to test interoperability of products, with
a beta trial of a certification program to follow in mid-2015.
"Certified G.fast implementations are expected to appear on the market
before the end of 2015," the ITU said.
G.fast relies on fiber to reach neighborhoods, with data sent over
copper the rest of the way. This is similar to AT&T's 45Mbps
fiber-to-the-node deployments, but the new DSL standard allows for much
greater speed to consumers' homes.
The new standard is "designed to deliver access speeds of up to 1Gbps
over existing telephone wires," the ITU said. "Within 400 meters of a
distribution point, G.fast provides fiber-like speeds matched with the
customer self-installation of DSL, resulting in cost-savings for service
providers and improved customer experience."
G.fast operates on higher frequencies than today's DSL, requiring
shorter transmission distances, so the gigabit speeds won't be available
at the outer range of that 400 meters. Within 250 meters, G.fast speeds
top out at 150Mbps, according to the ITU. In the US, successful G.fast
deployments would probably require a fiber expansion, though without the
expensive step of bringing fiber into each home. AT&T's current
fiber-to-the-node deployments place fiber about 600 to 900 meters from
homes.
But early demonstrations suggest that G.fast has great promise.
Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs developed its own extension of G.fast called
XG.FAST and said it could hit 10Gbps over 30 meters of copper and 1Gbps
over 70 meters of copper. BT is testing service that hits nearly
800Mbps, and Broadcom in October previewed chips for back-end systems
and consumer gateways that can push up to a gigabit per second.
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