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Adtran shipping Amendment 3 for "up to 2 gig"

Published: 26 January 2019 26 January 2019

Finally! Amendment 3 uses 212 MHz of spectrum for twice the speed, up to two gigabits including upstream and downstream. Most G.fast deployments are very close, including from the basement. So customers should be able to get close to the peak speed.

(Remember: G.fast can switch bandwidth between upstream and downstream. Usually but not always, most is used for downstream.)

Australia's NBN is (finally) switching to G.fast from VDSL, which has not been delivering the promised 100 megabits. It wasn't the fault of the VDSL technology, which could have delivered a consistent 100. NBN, 5-10 billion dollars over budget, didn't put in enough field terminals.

In other news from Adtran, two key customers. Deutsche Telekom and (I believe) Telmex, have been consistently ordering. Century seems to be back in a small way. The CAF money to the smaller telcos has been coming in. They are hopeful at Verizon, where they are still in the labs.

I'm glad to see Adtran's stock is up 40% from recent, five-year lows. Century, a key customer, has obliterated investment in most of its network, driving down Adtran's sales and pushing them to a loss. They've continued to invest in the Mosaic SDN system and building cable relationship. They have brought the price of 10 gig hardware so close to the GPON price they expect many, perhaps most, to switch to 10G in the next two years. (I've previously reported that  is the plan at Bell Canada.)

Here are the G.fast details from the investor call. (Seeking Alpha) 

To that end ADTRAN has announced commercial availability of the world's first second-generation G.Fast products and interest in G.Fast is largely driven by network operators leveraging this technology within their fiber to the distribution points and fiber to the basement deployment footprints.

ADTRAN is the first broadband access supplier to deliver G.Fast solutions that conform with Amendment Three of the ITU G.Fast Standard, which doubles the usable spectrum from 106 megahertz to 212 megahertz. With amendment three G.Fast is now capable of providing an aggregate bandwidth of two gigabits per second, delivering fiber like speeds for multi dwelling units and other applications which require leveraging existing the phone or cable television wiring infrastructure.

Deployment of ADTRAN’s G.Fast solutions are already underway in Tier-1 network in North America, Europe, Australia and the Middle East as network operators look to complement fiber to the home deployment to deliver gigabit services network wide.

We are pleased to announce during the quarter that ADTRAN's market-leading G.Fast solutions are one of the key enablers to NBN's nationwide rollout of its fiber to the current network. We have successfully helped NBN defined design and build this next generation fiber network and we are pleased to have been able to contribute in such a meaningful way.

ADTRAN to-date has shipped hundreds of thousands of gigabit capable G.Fast ports to our customers and this technology addresses a wide range of applications to advanced gigabit services delivery around the globe.

Sckipio 212 Gig+ competing with 5G at SK Korea

Published: 12 November 2018 12 November 2018

G.fast using 212 MHz of spectrum can deliver 1.5 gigabits+. That's enough to cover apartment buildings in Seoul and Seongnam, South Korea, as SK Broadband is doing. They are cascading two 24 port boxes from HFR, featuring the 24 port Sckipio chip. 

While Korea was one of the first to gigabit fibre, Sckipio reports two-thirds of Koreans do not have fibre all the way home. Most terminate the fibre in the basement, where G.fast is a natural upgrade for the original VDSL. Much of Japan is similar. When the typical fibre speed was 100 megabits, most of us counted fibre to the basement + 100 meg VDSL in our FTTH figures. That's no longer appropriate with gigabit fibre now common. 

Korea Telecom is the leading proponent of using G.hn rather than G.fast. KT and MaxLinear claim the crosstalk in G.hn is rarely a major problem. I have seen no data from the field. 

Sckipio is working to deliver 48 ports in a single unit.

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Viavi opinion: "Pretty much dormant and delayed"

Published: 03 November 2018 03 November 2018

Viavi sells test equipment to almost all the carriers. They apologized to investors for the low sales of G.fast. From Seeking Alpha, CEO Oleg Khaykin

Now, the G.fast is -- has been perennially delayed and postponed in North America. It’s not that it has past us by, I don’t think that anybody got any spend. And the expectations that telcos would match the cable guys with the spend on DSL side with the gigabit to the home, thus far have largely not materialized with a few exceptions of a smaller operators. The biggest players are still kind of kicking the can down the road.

Where we are seeing G.fast picking up and happening it’s a really in Europe. But as I said, Europe is a much smaller market for both cable, as well as G.fast than North America would be. So, I think, it still may happen, but it will probably at a much smaller volumes than many of our customers were initially anticipating. And I think some of the telco companies are now thinking perhaps using 5G to do the kind of final couple of hundred yards into the home versus the copper. So, it still hasn’t fully shaken out yet. So, that’s the status of G.fast. It’s pretty much dormant and delayed.

I hope they are wrong.

Swisscom betting on G.fast across the country

Published: 19 September 2018 19 September 2018

CTO Heinz Herren is publicly confident that G.fast - usually at a gigabit - is right for the company's future. "Now that we have the new generation of chips, the time is right," he said in the keynote at Huawei's UBBF in Geneva. The new chips can use 212 MHz of spectrum and deliver fast upstream and downstream. They will be deployed to most of the country other than the third already covered with FTTH.

     The challenge, of course, is Xavier Niel's Salt, offering a ten gig connection for 50 Swiss francs, US$52, to 1.3 million homes about a third of the country and growing rapidly. I stopped in a Salt store in Geneva and asked how people were responding to the 10 gig. With enthusiasm, I was told.

     I doubt there is much practical difference. between, say, 200 meg and 10 gig. The experience worldwide is that people do want the higher speeds if the price is similar.

     Zurich, the largest Swiss city, only has a population of 400,000 people and an unknown number of gnomes.

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Adtran: G.fast selling to DT, nbn Australia, AT&T, Italia, and Century.

Published: 03 September 2018 03 September 2018

Maybe the British Telecom cutback did not imply a trend. At Adtran's event, they discussed growing deployments at major companies. They also are seeing demand for 35b  VDSL. Germany is ready to turn on 10M lines of 35b. 

nbn told me last year they were headed to G.fast and now are installing. nbn is $2B more behind budget but expects to be completed in 2020. Although the government has changed, the nbn is not changing deployment plans. FTTN or G.fast to the remaining sites.

AT&T has been doing some G.fast outside their incumbent territory, They are actively competing for housing complexes nationwide. They have (finally) integrated G.fast into their OSS/BSS software and now are ready to use G.fast in-territory. John Donovan says they are doing 5M homes passed with FTTH in the next year. If he didn't misspeak, any G.fast would be beyond that 5M.

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British Telecom replaces 3M G.fast with 3M fiber

Published: 13 August 2018 13 August 2018

Clive Seeley likes fiber and so does the British government. They are hiring 3500 engineers to do the installs. They've now cut 3M lines from their world-leading G.fast rollout and will go to fiber. BT, DT, and Verizon have been holding back from fiber to the home. BT & DT have changed their mind. (Verizon is using mmWave.) Iain Morris heard this from BT: