Sckipio Squeezes 2Gbps Broadband Out of G.fast over Copper Lines

Israel-based Sckipio has made several announcements at the start of this week’s Broadband World Forum event, not least with their ability to squeeze a broadband speed of 2000Mbps out of the new G.fast (ITU G.9701) technology that BT are also preparing to roll-out. But there’s a catch.

The headline speed for a G.fast line, which is usually only possible on extremely short copper lines (sub 50 metres), is stated to be around 1000Mbps. As such the only way that Sckipio could achieve 2000Mbps is by bonding (ITU-T G.998.2) a couple of copper lines together (twisted pair), which also delivered 1000Mbps+ (aggregate throughput) at a distance of 300 metres.

Such developments are predictable, albeit mostly only of interest for business purposes because the high cost of bonding usually rules them out as a viable solution for home users (e.g. you have to pay for two lots of line rental and the bonded broadband service itself often adds some extra costs). Still it’s an interesting development.

Sadly we are not told what distance was required in order for Sckipio to hit the headline 2Gbps figure.

David Baum, co-Founder and CEO of Sckipio, said:

“Bonding is an important requirement, especially with North American operators. Service providers need the ability to deliver fiber-like speeds to address regulatory and competitive challenges.

Even better, Sckipio allows the service provider to provision such performance only where necessary – keeping overall CapEx and OpEx costs low when gigabit speeds are not required.”

Perhaps of more interest to telecoms operators is the news that Sckipio has also managed to double the G.fast port density by introducing the world’s first “ultra-compact” G.fast Distribution Point Unit (DPU) to support 32-ports of vectoring (i.e. 32 copper pairs in a single distribution side device).

At present the current limit of 16-ports can mean you need to build more infrastructure in order to serve areas with dense populations, such as big Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) style apartment blocks. The greater port density and use of distributed vectoring (lower power requirements) could help to reduce the infrastructure needed and thus lower deployment costs.

Separately the firm also teamed-up with ZyXEL to build a new 16-port G.fast DPU and a single-port G.fast to Ethernet bridge based on Sckipio’s chipset, but related hardware won’t be available until Q2 2016.

As most of our readers will know BT are currently conducting several large-scale trials of G.fast technology (ITU G.9701), which will start to commercially roll-out to 10 million UK premises from 2016/17 and should initially offer speeds of up to 330Mbps (50Mbps upload) before rising to 500Mbps over the next decade (here and here). BT’s G.fast can deliver 330Mbps at about 350 metres (here).

Interestingly BT are using hardware from ADTRAN, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei, which is important because ADTRAN’s kit is mostly based off Sckipio’s G.fast magic.