Gfast map
In 2016, G.fast looked very promising.
But only BT & Australia's nbn remain
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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Calix Showing 48 Port G.fast DSLAM
- Published: 23 October 2017 23 October 2017
Testing in a major telco lab. The new Sckipio chip allows daisy-chaining 24 port boards for up to 96 ports. (Other approaches require an external vectoring controller.) Calix has wasted no time developing a 48 port DSLAM, showing this week at BBWF.
The new Calix/Sckipio DSLAM also supports "up to 2 gigabits," although it best to think of that as 1.5 gigabits. The cDTA allows near instantaneous switching of an individual subscriber's bandwidth from downstream to upstream, allowing much faster upstream.
212 MHz Likely Late 2018
- Published: 19 October 2017 19 October 2017
Ryan Ding of Huawei is waiting for updated Broadcom firmware, which he expects before the end of the year. He will then be able to supply units for telco trials "in the first half of 2018."
Ding and everyone else are working diligently to get the DSLAMs ready to deploy in volume as soon as possible, I think late 2018 looks most likely. We won't know for sure until we have several months of tests.
Preliminary reports are that both the Sckipio and Broadcom chips are reaching 1.5 gig.
20 Gigabit DSL - Live Demo
- Published: 19 October 2017 19 October 2017
The meter reads 20 gigabits. Jack Zhu had just said, "You have to see this," and pulled me over. It was the first demo of Huawei's four port bonded G.mgfast.
Two boxes perhaps five feet apart, were connected by four lines of cat 6 cable. Each line carried 5 gigabits of prestandard G.mgfast. The total is 20 gigs, They expect that speed to go 30 meters. They are finding good performance out to 100 meters.
Nokia's Hidden New SX-16F DSLAM
- Published: 15 October 2017 15 October 2017
Buried deep in an SDAN announcement is a mention of a Lightspan SX-16F. They call it "The world's first 16-port reverse-powered G.fast micro-node which can be safely reverse-powered from the home." No more details available at press time.
Bonded 35b Tester From intec
- Published: 13 October 2017 13 October 2017
intec and Adtran have working parts for testing bonding. 35b uses double the spectrum for double the speed, 200+ megabits at 500 meters. It's not ready for the field yet, but test gear is now available from the German firm intec. Look for them at the Broadband Forum Interop exhibit.
Jeff Waldhuter of Verizon told me not investing in testing was the biggest mistake they made in the early days of DSL. BBWF will also feature Lincoln Lavoie, who has led the UNH/Broadband Forum testing for years. You can now buy the testing software they use for your own work. UNH uses Telebyte hardware, who will speak at the show.
What Will Broadcom, Huawei, Metanoia & Nokia Bring To Berlin Broadband
- Published: 13 October 2017 13 October 2017
Companies time releases for BBWF, the biggest event of the year. Here are some possibilities for the companies that haven't provided me news yet.
Huawei will brief me at their Hangzhou event this week. For now, I know the 96 port external vectoring boxes are doing well in customer labs and probably ready. Two telcos were impressed.
(Huawei, Calix, and Adtran are very generous with the press, hosting regular events. All three do a good job trying to answer questions when they can. The result is they get far more coverage. I make a point of reaching out to those who tell me less, including writing this as a reminder.)
Metanoia is the third G.fast chipmaker that joins the UNH interops.