Gfast map
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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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.
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.
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.
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:
1M Ports of G.fast ship, $150M annual run rate
- Published: 22 July 2018 22 July 2018
Alam Tamboli of Dell'Oro reports ~891,500 ports shipped by the end of Q1, which implies over 1M in Q2. The 2018 year over year growth looks to be 80%. He also expects an annual run rate of over $150M/year by the first quarter of 2019, plus the cpes. That's good news for a segment that has been exceedingly disappointing. That may be because telcos are waiting for the new chips with a nominal speed up to two gigabits.
Adtran also has encouraging G.fast news. Australia is ready to take substantial volumes. AT&T finally appears ready to use G.fast in district, having solved the software integration problems.
Dell'Oro separately notes that wireless base stations sold well in Q1. That's consistent with the well-known buidup of Verizon's 5G mmWave network, soon to turn on. They expect an actual decline in service provider switches and routers in 2018, as prices go down faster than traffic volumes go up.