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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Australia's nbn Going G.fast
- Published: 29 September 2015 29 September 2015
220K vectored lines constructed, hope to turn on 60K/month starting in January, Doing fiber home, cable, and FTTN wasn't enough for Malcolm's crew. They are adding G.fast to the mix, probably only a limited number of apartment buildings. Petroc Wilson in COMMSDay reports NBN's current estimate of 4.5M DSL/FTTN homes, 38% of the total. G.fast is looking good in some trials. It will likely take a larger share than currently planned
The preliminary results in selected areas are promising: "consistent FTTN speeds of 100Mbps downstream and 40Mbps upstream for premises 400 metres or less." In wider deployment, 10% of homes will not even reach 50 megabits. That implies they are limiting the number of cabinets for budget reasons. They should offer customers who really need the speed an option to bond two lines. Fortunately, Adtran - rumored now a second source to Alcatel at NBN - is already proving out G.fast bonding.
"NBN cost blows out by at least AU$10bn" is Richard Chirgwin's take on recent financial reports.
Taiwan, Alcatel: G.fast is Commercial
- Published: 29 September 2015 29 September 2015
BT calls 4,000 a trial but Alcatel calls similar at Chunghwa "first commercial deployment." Whatever you call it, G.fast is here, with about 10,000 lines about to be installed. Rami Verbin of Sckipio told me the real growth won't come until 2016 and it looks like he was on track. A couple of years ago, Chunghwa promised to spend $3B to bring "fiber" to 97% of premises by 2015. but Tony Brown reports only 200,000 true fiber to the home lines by the middle of this year.
The embarrassing delay gives them incentive to make stronger claims than BT. Taiwan is probably not connecting significantly more lines this year than England. Everyone knows this is early equipment likely to need debugging. The average Taiwanese will get higher speeds than the average Brit because there are far more apartments dwellers in Taiwan. The English love their gardens. From the basement, speeds will often be 400-700 megabits down.
Britain originally planned to bring 400-700 megabits to most homes but decided not to spend the money on the million+ field units that would require. Instead, they will run G.halffast, the same gear but over longer runs from the (much fewer) existing cabinets. The official word is that they will reach 300-500 megabits combined upstream and downstream. I'll call it 250 meg down until proven otherwise.
BT Caps G.fast at 330 megabits
- Published: 26 August 2015 26 August 2015
2,000 homes connecting in coming weeks. Everyone in the industry is watching BT's trial of G.fast - even if BT is now deploying "G.halffast." Gavin Patterson. CEO of BT is telling investors and regulators BT will rapidly deploy 10M+ lines. In 2014, BT tested G.fast technology at 600 and even 700 megabits down on very short loops. This February, Patterson was still talking 500 megabits. Those speeds required going to many of Britain's 4,000,000 "distribution points."
This spring, they reduced the targeted speeds to 250 correction 10/10 330 megabits, going to existing street cabinets instead of the distribution points. The money men decided the higher speeds weren't worth the extra cost. That's risky - cable in England will soon be at a gigabit. Many BT customers - 5-20% - will get much slower speeds, depending on how many cabinets they ultimately deploy.
150 megabit DSL: 35b, Super Vectoring, Vplus, Midi-DSL
- Published: 16 August 2015 16 August 2015
230 megabits (up and down combined) looks to win at Deutsche Telekom. Call it what you like - Alcatel, Huawei, Adtran all have their own names. 35b - referring to the 35 MHz used - is emerging as most popular.
35b uses more MHz to get higher speeds out of DSL. To keep the comparison meaningful, I subtract the upstream and hence call this 150 megabits. The speed is from a KPN lab test (below, KPN pr in Google translation.) Paul Spruyt of Alcatel believes speeds still have room to improve within the 35 MHz band. Adtran tells me production units suitable for volume deployment are unlikely before summer of 2016.
Schneider of Adtran: We bonded G.fast for over a gigabit
- Published: 15 August 2015 15 August 2015
Gigabit required to keep up with cable. It's in the standard, but until recently everyone assumed it would be delayed for lack of customer demand. But with gigabit cable coming close, AT&T is pressing for a gigabit over DSL. Adtran, a major supplier to AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, has proven that G.fast can easily exceed a gigabit downstream by bonding two lines. It's just a lab demonstration for now without a timetable for field trials.
G.fast vectoring and pre-coding require serious processing power to keep up with the high speeds. Bonding for even higher speeds is a challenge, but Adtran CTO Kevin Schneider doesn't see any obstacles that will prevent practical deployment.
British Telecom: 100-500 meg "G.halffast"
- Published: 14 July 2015 14 July 2015
BT cuts back on G.fast speeds, deployment. 150-400 down is still a big improvement over BT's current network but it will typically be half the speed originally planned. BT was going to deliver 500-800 megabit G.fast to most of 4,000,000 distribution points on light poles, in basements and in very small dug in enclosures.
Instead, they would deploy to existing cabinets (10,000's of thousands,) avoiding the cost of running fiber so many places. That saves billions but reduces typical download speed from 400-700 megabits to 150-400 megabits. In either case, 5-15% or so of homes will run even slower.