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UPDATE BT Boast of 1000Mbps G.fast and FTTdp Broadband Technology

Thursday, Sep 25th, 2014 (1:24 pm) - Score 4,407

Earlier this month ISPreview.co.uk became the first to reveal some of the results from BT’s first field trial of hybrid-fibre G.fast (ITU G.9701) and FTTdp broadband technology (here) and today the operator, perhaps seizing on recent calls from UK Labour Party activists, delivered its own take describing the service as “very promising … with significant potential” for the future.

At present BT predominantly uses FTTC to deliver broadband speeds of up to 80Mbps (20Mbps upload), which works by taking a fibre optic cable to your local street cabinet and then utilising VDSL2 and your existing copper telecoms cable (i.e. between the street cabinet and home/office) to deliver the service. This can work over copper runs of up to around 2000 metres, although sub-400m is best (most homes exist within 400m).

By comparison G.fast is similar to FTTC/VDSL2, except it’s designed to deliver top speeds of up to 1000Mbps. The problem is that you can only get even close to that performance by using very short copper lines and thus in order to get the most out of G.fast the technology must be combined with another solution – Fibre to the Distribution Point (FTTdp).

In simple terms, FTTdp shortens the copper line by bringing the fibre optic cable even closer to your home than the local street cabinet, such as by installing small remote nodes (mini cabinets) on nearby telegraph poles or in other locations etc. We revealed in our exclusive report on the operators first field trial that speeds of approaching 1000Mbps were possible, as an aggregate, but only if the node is positioned practically right outside your home. Today’s press release from BT expresses this as follows; although it’s worth remembering that the trial only involved 3 houses (see our original piece for the results at 47 metres).

gfast trial bt results

Joe Garner, CEO of Openreach, said:

Our fibre rollout is making a huge positive difference to this country, already helping 82% of people have access to superfast broadband. Businesses obviously demand even greater bandwidth and can already access speeds of up to 10Gbps via dedicated business lines that we provide across the country. But customer needs will continue to change, and that’s why we’re deploying a mix of current technologies as well as testing new ones. We will continue to innovate so that we meet our customers’ needs today, and in the future.”

Dr Tim Whitley, BT’s MD of Research and Innovation, said:

We see G.FAST as a very promising technology with significant potential – that’s why we’re putting some of our best minds on the case to assess it fully in a purpose-built facility.

BT has a long history of pushing the boundaries in telecommunications, from the earliest days of the electric telegraph to today’s global fibre networks, and it’s crucial that we stay ahead of the curve for the benefit of our customers and shareholders.”

BT’s press release notes that commercial G.FAST equipment is still “immature“, although approval of the related G.9701 recommendation is expected in December 2014 and the first viable hardware should start to surface at around the same time. No doubt the news might please some Labour Party activists, which earlier this week called for the party to adopt a 1Gbps for all by 2020 policy.

But it’s questionable whether even G.fast could achieve such a feat in that timeframe, the FTTdp rollout alone would take a lot of time and further trials will still need to take place first. Not to mention the problem with distance, there’s simply no way you’re going to give everybody 1000Mbps by using G.fast unless it’s an incredibly uneconomic deployment and at that point you might as well just do full fibre (FTTP/H).

Instead it may be more realistic to expect real-world download speeds of 200-400Mbps from G.fast, not least because the technology runs into problems when forced to coexist with FTTC/VDSL2 as it would in BT’s network. This is admittedly still a massive improvement over FTTC, but nothing like 1000Mbps.

On top of that G.fast + FTTdp will still be a fairly long / expensive upgrade, with the smart money suggesting we won’t be seeing a commercial product for a few more years; unless BT suddenly decided to skip their FTTC Vectoring upgrade and go right for the big G (this is a possibility). But for the time being BT has yet to make any firm commitments, except for opening a new ultrafast broadband lab at its Adastral Park R&D centre in Ipswich.

UPDATE 1:37pm

Outside of the official PR we note a small message from BT’s newsroom in which the operator suggests that G.fast could potentially be rolled out in the future “IF” there’s demand or pressure for such speeds (aside from the businesses that can already access those speeds).

One might consider the pressure from Virgin Media’s ever faster services or rival FTTH/P providers to be worthy of a mention. Demand will of course always be strongest amongst the most isolated communities (both urban and rural alike) where broadband is at its slowest.

UPDATE 26th September 2014

Never one to miss an opportunity to comment, fibre optic ISP Hyperoptic has chimed in with a small slice of criticism.

Dana Tobak, Managing Director of Hyperoptic, told ISPreview.co.uk:

While G.fast technology is impressive in a test environment, bringing it to reality will require significant investment in street cabinets and will be limited to high density areas. No need to wait for G.fast – these areas are being upgraded today by Gigabit providers like ourselves.

The future of broadband is FTTP, extending the life of copper is a costly exercise that is just delaying the inevitable.”

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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