Genesis’s Copper VDSL2 mBond Broadband Kit Certified by BT for the UK

Canadian firm Genesis Technical Systems (GTS) has managed to get their long-gestating mBond technology through BT’s Modem Conformance Testing (MCT) for the SIN498 standard, which means that their bonded copper broadband line kit can be used on Openreach’s FTTC (VDSL2) network.

Bonding multiple copper lines together is of course not a new approach, although most such products tend to only support bonding of two to four lines. The complexity, diminishing returns and cost of bonding more than that can soon start to be outweighed by alternative solutions, such as leased lines or newer FTTP / G.fast connections.

Nevertheless GTS sees mBond, which has been around for awhile and can in theory bond up to 12 pairs (lines) together (assuming you can find that many spare at either the building and / or cabinet), as a solution for operators that may require quick access to increased backhaul capacity (i.e. to help serve mobile networks, large buildings or small cells etc.), such as in areas where alternative fibre or wireless solutions don’t exist.

Stephen Cooke, Genesis Founder and CTO, said:

“This is a massive achievement for Genesis and a testament to the high-quality products we produce and the professional standards we adhere to. This certification also verifies the backhaul features of DSL Rings, instilling confidence in our technology in the UK and around the world.”

Peter Khoury, Genesis’s CEO and Legal Counsel, said:

“Genesis has gone from strength to strength this year, and is asserting itself within the global telecoms industry. Achieving this compliance will open many doors for Genesis, paving the way for UK orders of mBond, particularly to carriers and service providers using BT’s VDSL2 network throughout the UK.”

We think that’s possibly the first time that passing a standard MCT conformance test has ever been expressed in such glowing terms, but it’s obviously something that matters a lot to GTS. As a side note, the DSL Rings technology mentioned above is one that some readers might recall from a few years ago, which for various reasons never really took off in the UK.

Elsewhere GTS further claims that mBond is also highly tolerant of individual line pair performance and failures, can support carrier scale deployments, has greater configuration flexibility with point to multipoint bonding capability, is scalable and DSLAM agnostic. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets much traction over this side of the pond.