A1 Telekom First to Connect Customer via 536Mbps G.fast Broadband

Austrian ISP A1 Telekom (Telekom Austria Group) and Alcatel-Lucent claim to have connected the first customer in the world to a domestic copper telecoms network using G.fast (ITU G.9700/1) technology, which some predict could eventually replace BT’s up to 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service in the United Kingdom.

As a quick re-cap, G.fast is roughly similar to FTTC except that the high-capacity fibre optic cable ends up being taken even closer to homes than your local street cabinet and this means shorter copper lines, which delivers even better performance. Naturally it’s a bit more complicated than that, but for now we’ll just keep it simple.

Sadly the official press release doesn’t offer a lot of new information and merely states that the customer experienced data rates of “more than” 100Mbps (Megabits per second) per household via existing copper lines, while also highlighting the need for copper line lengths of sub-250 metres.

Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO Telekom Austria Group, said:

“We’re proud to have succeeded in connecting the first customer in the world to our domestic A1 network with G.fast. This technology will enable us to offer urban areas data rates ten, even up to twenty, times higher than ever before. Fiber to the home remains our long term vision, but we consider G.fast as an intelligent interim solution until fiber will have a similar coverage as we have with copper now.“

This might merely be a case of managing expectations for the mass market because we know that G.fast can go well beyond 100Mbps, although the dizzy claims of 1Gbps are almost certainly an expectation too far (lest we not forget that ISPs have to pay a lot of money for such capacity), and even existing VDSL2 (FTTC) connections could deliver the kind of performance mentioned for A1’s first customer above.

By comparison BT has already tested a mock-up style G.fast solution with three demonstration homes at their Adastral Park engineering HQ in Ipswich (here and here), which delivered download speeds of approaching 800Mbps (albeit only at 19 metres from the local node). However, unlike A1’s actual customer trial, BT’s test was not conducted using commercial grade kit or as part of a real-world deployment; this will no doubt be next on their to-do list, especially now that the necessary hardware is finally starting to appear (here).

As usual we weren’t happy with the limited information in A1’s PR and so we contacted Alcatel-Lucent in the hope of learning a few more details. According to AL, a speedtest conducted by the A1 customer yesterday delivered impressive download speeds of 536Mbps and uploads of 116Mbps, although crucially we don’t know the length of their copper line or if the infrastructure was co-existing with VDSL2 services (can cause performance loss). But at least this sounds like a more reflective performance for G.fast and is probably still on a fairly short run of copper.

Apparently a joint AL and A1 “lab test” conducted last year achieved 1.1Gbps, which is similar to an early lab test that BT conducted, although these are almost never reflective of actual real-world performance; kindly take such things with a shovel of salt.

Never the less the fact that A1 has connected an actual subscriber, not an employee or engineer at a demo facility, is a significant achievement and means they can examine a real-world deployment, including any related customer issues that might crop up. But even A1 doesn’t expect the service to receive a commercial launch until 2016.