The NBN Co. has announced it will begin deploying ‘G.fast’ technology next year, which will pave the way for “ultra fast speeds” over copper lines, through its broadband access network. The service will reportedly only be available to business users in the initial period.
The government-backed entity heralds G.fast as “next-generation broadband technology”.
NBN Co. has previously affirmed its hopes that the business/enterprise sector will represent 15% – 20% percent of total revenue in the future.
The company states the roll out of G.fast into its Multi Technology Model (MTM) will enable it to provide even faster speeds to users on Fibre-to-the-Building (FTTB) and Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC) networks.
The company claims the deployment of G.fast tech will push broadband speeds past current levels of 100Mbps (delivered by VDSL technology).
NBN Co claims G.fast will deliver speeds up to 1Gbps over copper lines, by utilising higher frequencies of either 106MHz or 212MHz. By comparison, VDSL provides just 17MHz.
The company affirms it trialed G.fast tech in October 2015, which birthed speeds “of 600Mbps on a 20 year-old stretch of 100 metre copper cabling”.
NBN Co states it will conduct further testing before official launch.
The new G.fast tech will be supplied by existing fixed-broadband suppliers; Nokia, ADTRAN and Netcomm Wireless.
The company states various international counterparts have already launched G.fast to end-users, such as AT&T in the US, BT in the UK, Swisscom and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom.
NBN Co’s Chief Strategy Officer, JB Rousselot, states of the new innovation:
“Bringing G.fast technology to the nbn access network in 2018 again shows our commitment to being at the cutting edge of emerging technologies”
“Adding G.fast to the toolkit for the FTTC and FTTB networks will allow us to deliver ultra-fast services faster and more cost effectively than if we had to deliver them on a full Fibre-to-the-Premises connection”
“Our FTTP and HFC end-users already have the technology to support Gigabit services and adding G.fast over FTTC provides the upgrade path for our FTTN end users to ultimately receive Gigabit speeds too”
