Gfast map
Updated April, 2018
Dark Blue: Firm commitments from incumbent: BT (10M), Belgacom, Australian NBN, Swisscom, Austria, Bezeq Israel, Chunghwa Taiwan, Telus Canada, Telekom South Africa, SK Korea, (U.S.) AT&T, Century, Frontier, Windstream, Belgium, Omantel
Mid Blue: Smaller carriers in Germany, Norway, Finland, Japan
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Luxembourg On the Map
- Published: 14 April 2018 14 April 2018
Full fiber is at 60%; G.fast for some of the remainder. Luxembourg is one of the richest countries on earth. The 560,000 locals have a per capita income of over $100,000. They can afford whatever form of broadband they choose.
The National Post is doing fiber to most homes but has decided to use G.fast in selected apartment buildings to save the cost of running fiber. France Telecom/Orange had similar plans, especially in the older buildings in Paris that don't want to be disturbed. As far as I know, they haven't moved on that.
I hear slews of telcos are using G.fast in selected buildings but very few are announced.
Australia Putting VDSL in G.fast Locations
- Published: 14 April 2018 14 April 2018
Australia's nbn is running fiber close (FTTC/FTTdp) to 1.5M homes, suggesting it would go "to the end of the driveway." G.fast could go well over a gigabit the short distance but fades rapidly after ~250 meters. G.mgfast could carry 4 gig the length of a very long driveway. (50 meters.) VDSL doesn't make sense unless most of your customers are 500 meters or more.
The difference in cost between VDSL 35b (200/40) & G.fast (750/750) works out to less than $2/month unless you are wildly overpaying. nbn is building to G.fast distances. There's no good reason not to deploy. BT has well over a million lines of G.fast DSLAMs deployed, so there is no doubt it works fine.
By December, 15M Passed By 35b Supervectoring Deutsche Telekom
- Published: 26 March 2018 26 March 2018
Some will get 250 megabits down, some 25 megabits. 35b Supervectoring often reaches speeds over 200 megabits by using twice the spectrum, 35 MHz. (Hence the name, 35b, used by most engineers.) DT has been condemned for not delivering the promised speeds and hiding that with "up to" figures. They've now announced that the "up to 250 megabit" 35b homes will get a minimum of 103 meg down.
It was originally promised for ~2015 but the vectoring engine is just reaching reliability. DT had pushed the 35b operational date back to 2019. Höttges in the financial call now says they will turn on 35b in 2018.
Whenever DT turns on the higher speeds, they will quickly reach 15M homes.
Point-Topic: 3M Homes Passed, 29K Subscribers
- Published: 24 February 2018 24 February 2018
Still slow, waiting for second generation chips
Point-Topic, a very respected broadband data source, now has figures for G.fast. They also have produced a clickable map, something I've been working on as well. (I've reproduced their map small at left; please go to their site for the data.)
I believe they have all the large and medium-sized telcos with announced deployments.
35b: Ready or Not? Germans Say Not, Some Say Yes
- Published: 05 January 2018 05 January 2018
A reader wondered about my 35b story writing, "35b to my knowledge is already in market." I know Fastweb in Italy is already selling to consumers at "Up to 200 megabits" but without vectoring they will often be much lower. On the other hand, Deutsche Telecom, the largest expected customer, says it won't be ready until 2019. I believe what's going on is that Broadcom is selling 35b chips but the vectoring isn't ready for large deployments, but the primary sources aren't providing answers.
The reader, wanting to be confident, asked what were my sources for the story Deutsche Telecom: 35b Supervectoring Delayed to 2019? That's always a fair question.
I've been reporting 35b since 2015, but this story was inspired by an article by Achim Sawall Super Vectoring kommt bei Telekom erst im Jahr 2019. (250 MBPS:Super Vectoring will not be available at Telekom until 2019) (All translations by Google.)
"Super Vectoring with data transfer rates of up to 250 MBit / s will only be available at Deutsche Telekom in 2019.
Qualcomm's Not To Be Believed Comeback in G.fast
- Published: 29 December 2017 29 December 2017
Qualcomm Ikanos division and product killed in 2016. A link to truthfulreporter.com from Google News took me to a "research report" from market.biz, with the four leading G.fast chipset vendors identified. It led to a report dated Sept 17.
They correctly identify three G.fast chipset vendors, Broadcom, Ikanos, and Metanoia. But I strongly doubt the "report" is worth its $2900 price given they claim Qualcomm makes G.fast chips. If anyone knows who is behind this fake news, please tell me.
That Qualcomm killed G.fast chips was widely reported after I broke the story.