Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Green ISP Joins Zen Internet in Scrapping G.fast Broadband

Saturday, Sep 4th, 2021 (12:01 am) - Score 4,944
green_isp

Non-profit UK broadband provider Green ISP has just done the same as Zen Internet did last week (here) by opting to cease the sale of Openreach’s (BT) increasingly troubled hybrid fibre G.fast based “ultrafast broadband” products, which they originally launched back in 2018 (here).

One of our readers, Phil, noted that their G.fast products had also vanished from sale, and we were able to confirm the change. We queried the reason for this with Green ISP and were told that they no longer supply G.fast products because, according to their support team, “there was no real demand for them and they are not widely available.”

G.fast can only deliver its best speeds to those within c.100-300 metres of a PCP street cabinet and that tends to exclude a fair number of potential consumers, while take-up has indeed been weak. On top of that Openreach took the decision, in 2019 (here), to shelve the rollout in favour of a greater focus on Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology. As a result, G.fast only ever managed to cover 2.8 million UK premises before it was stopped (well below the original aim of 10 million homes and businesses).

Green ISP told ISPreview.co.uk that “FTTP and SoGEA seems to have taken over as a first choice recently, so we decided to stop offering g.fast. … that may change in future, but no plans to reintroduce it this year, if at all.” The good news is that there are still plenty of ISPs selling G.fast products (for now), such as BT, TalkTalk, Sky Broadband, AAISP, Cerberus Networks, EE, Freeola and more. But as time goes on it may become harder for those providers to justify continued support for what is becoming quite a niche product.

We should add that other ISPs, such as Trunk Networks (inc. No One, Leetline) and Structured Communications, also no longer list G.fast packages for new customers (this changed a while ago for some of them).

Share with Twitter
Share with Linkedin
Share with Facebook
Share with Reddit
Share with Pinterest
Tags: ,
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 .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
19 Responses
  1. Avatar photo adslmax says:

    Five ISPs GreenISP, Ghost Gaming ISP, Structured Communications, Trunk Network and Zen Internet has stopped sell G.fast. I expecting other ISP’s are to follow shortly. Plusnet are the only ISP never release G.fast product.

    G.fast ISP’s still selling:

    BT
    EE
    IDNet
    Pulse8
    UnchainedISP
    TalkTalk
    Sky
    AAISP
    Webmate ISP
    Freeola
    Cerberus

    1. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

      You never know, in 10 to 20 years you might get FTTP.

      To be honest g.fast didn’t need that many ISPs in the first place.

    2. Avatar photo The Gringo says:

      What do you mean didn’t need that many ISPs? These ISPs are just resellers of openreach broadband. They were not all installing it themselves.

      Either way it was rubbish.

    3. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

      @The Gringo Exactly, which is why there was no need for that many

    4. Avatar photo Fastman says:

      Wibbledoff / The Gringo the isp will have had to done various things in order to be able to consume the product in the same way and ISPs can choose / choose not sell FTTP – thats a commercial decision they have to decide all openreach do is offer the product to the CPS how they package / martket / Sell is up to the Service providers — in this case these service providers have decided the commercial case of Selling GFAST is not covered by the process and things that have to be in place to sell it and support it Gringo i assume you think it rubbish either A you its not available to you in your area or its available on your cabinet but your out of distance (so personally cant get it )

    5. Avatar photo FibreBubble says:

      BT tick. Sky tick. TalkTalk tick. Pretty much the whole market then.

    6. Avatar photo Ben says:

      Vodafone never offered g.fast.

    7. Avatar photo madness says:

      God knows why you obsess over G.fast.

      You continually post incorrect information to what end. Not only is it useless but also just a waste of time for everyone involved

  2. Avatar photo Jason says:

    My G.Fast is awesome so dont know what your on about . 300meg consistently with lower ping times . Speak for yourself if your rubbishing it

    1. Avatar photo A says:

      I think the problem with it is that it shows Openreach stretching the copper network when it really needed to go. FTTC was fine, if designed well then it can be on an upgrade path to full FTTP and it gave people much faster internet quickly and it was accepted at the time that they should try to move to FTTP with the plan being 25% by I think 2012 but this was dropped.

      Its worth remembering that a lot of experience since then has improved OPs FTTP rollout, back then it would take 7 hours to install and require more splicing which will have increased costs a lot.

      Though trying to make it more efficient (as they have done today) is a lot better than cancelling it (as they did back then) and Gfast showed that they were going to continue to keep copper as long as they could despite many of the lines being in not great condition and the future clearly being fttp.

    2. Avatar photo Home and Away says:

      “when it really needed to go”

      Why did g.fast need to go when it is/was just a temporary stop gap done at minimal cost? It could be many years before Jason gets FTTP installed, in the meantime g.fast is a nice upgrade done at minimal cost by Openreach.

    3. Avatar photo A says:

      @Home and Away Gfast was announced in 2017 when FTTP was clearly the future. You have to be so close to the cabinet that the additional fibre cable for FTTP isn’t a lot. FTTC was a nice stopgap to get Internet speeds higher, Gfast was Openreach stretching their copper network.

    4. Avatar photo The Gringo says:

      I’m not so sure it was seen by OR as a temporary stopgap solution on the road to FTTP.
      There were articles talking about gigabit GFast and at over 300m etc. Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s another lab experiment that doesn’t translate to real world. But *I* think OR saw this as heck if we can give people 300mbit, maybe gigabit in the future over dirty old copper lines and not fit fibre … let’s do it. Let’s not forget this was their modus operandi for the last 20 odd years. Countries all over Europe were fitting fibre since like 1999/2000 like Sweden and Romania but BT/OR were like … nawww lets just keep using copper and lets give em DSL .. in fact lets just outright lie and call it fibre.

  3. Avatar photo Home and Away says:

    @ A Says
    I don’t think Openreach (or anyone else for that matter) ever said that G.Fast was the future. Any properties which were g.fast enabled weren’t all of a sudden put at the back of the FTTP queue. The reason why some ISPs have stopped selling g.fast is purely down to the very low take-up rates. Perhaps Openreach over-estimated adoption rates of g.fast but of course hindsight is a wonderful thing…

    As for
    “You have to be so close to the cabinet that the additional fibre cable for FTTP isn’t a lot.”
    FTTP does NOT come from FTTC cabinets, it comes from fibre aggregation nodes which can sometimes be many km’s away from the FTTC cabinets, though typically 96% of those in FTTC areas will be within 2km of their nearest fibre aggregation node.

    1. Avatar photo A says:

      “Any properties which were g.fast enabled weren’t all of a sudden put at the back of the FTTP queue.” – I don’t remember there even being an FTTP queue then, I believe it was just various trials or very rural areas from Superfast Cornwall and the like.

      “FTTP does NOT come from FTTC cabinets, it comes from fibre aggregation nodes which can sometimes be many km’s away from the FTTC cabinets, though typically 96% of those in FTTC areas will be within 2km of their nearest fibre aggregation node.” – I’m aware it doesn’t come from cabinets, both Gfast pods and FTTP splitter nodes require a cable from the aggregation node, the extra cable from the splitter node to the CBT and drop wire from the CBT isn’t a lot.

    2. Avatar photo Disgruntled Customer says:

      > Any properties which were g.fast enabled weren’t all of a sudden put at the back of the FTTP queue

      gfast is available here, so doing some exploring on bt’s broadband checker, I can tell you that all the postcodes that can get gfast say “The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme” and “FTTP is not available”. All the postcodes that cannot get gfast near me say “Our records show the following FTTP network service information for these premises:-Single Dwelling Unit Residential UG premises served by 2.5 Inch plastic duct XX. FTTP is available and a new ONT may be ordered.”

      and literally anyone can go to the bt checker site and see this is true in a great many areas where GFast and FTTP are deployed, my town included.

      Openreach has left the gfast areas out to dry. I know, because i’m one, there are many others, and my gfast isn’t particularly fast. marginally better than VDSL2 and well below what the checker says. FTTP is available in my town, just not in the streets that gfast is. This is publicly verifiable in many cases where gfast is deployed, but not all.

      We are paying for ORs failure gfast deployment and being passed over for FTTP.

    3. Avatar photo TOP KEK says:

      From Peter’s link

      “The UK is ahead of its major European neighbours when it comes to broadband”.

      HAHAHAHAHAHAH TOP KEK. Why do we keep telling ourselves this? Even Romania has better internet than UK does.

    4. Avatar photo John says:

      “I’m aware it doesn’t come from cabinets, both Gfast pods and FTTP splitter nodes require a cable from the aggregation node”

      That’s a massive oversimplification.

      G.Fast pods don’t need anything fed from the Aggregation Node.
      They use power and a spare fibre from the existing FTTC cabinet.

      The presence of G.Fast doesn’t make any FTTP quicker or cheaper.

      “the extra cable from the splitter node to the CBT and drop wire from the CBT isn’t a lot”

      Lol… isn’t a lot.

      Running fibre from an Aggregation Node to a splitter, then to a CBT, is a huge logistical challenge in many areas.

      Those who think it’s just pulling a single fibre down a nice clear empty duct need a strong reality check.

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5472)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2524)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1778)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon