G.fast update October 2016

There have been a number of G.fast announcements and developments this month (see this previous post for more background on G.fast):

• Australia’s nbnco reported that its lab trials of XG.fast with Nokia have achieved a peak aggregate speed of 8Gbit/s over 30 metres of twisted-pair copper. Peak aggregate speeds of 5Gbit/s were achieved over 70 metres. nbnco envisage that the technology can be used to deliver ultra-fast speeds to either Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) in a Fibre-to-the-Building (FTTB) scenario or via a Distribution Point Unit (DPU) in a Fibre-to-the Curb (FTTC) based network. Also see technical analysis of XG.fast from Ars Technica.
• ISP Review reported that the International Telecommunication Union, specifically ITU-T Study Group 15, has doubled the best speeds achievable via the new G.fast broadband standard to 2Gbit/s and added support for coaxial cable. The refined standards have already achieved first-stage approval and are expected to see final approval before the end of 2016.
• Swisscom announced it is the first European telecommunications service provider to launch G.fast services (more background on BT’s G.fast trials here): “The technology will allow Swisscom to quickly and cost-effectively provide high transmission speeds to up to 500 Mbit/s.” Also see BBC News and the Register.
• A new Ovum report, Gigabit Networks: The future of G.fast & XG-FAST Services, has predicted that G.fast will be serving nearly 30 million subscriber homes and businesses around the world by 2021, representing 3% of the global fixed broadband market. The report was jointly commissioned by Australia’s nbn and BT to provide an overview of G.fast, including carrier plans to introduce the technology and its further evolution in the form of XG.fast. BT anticipates that G.fast will be used to service a footprint of as many as ten million homes and businesses by 2020; results from its completed trials in Huntingdon, Gosforth and Swansea showed that over 75% of lines were able to deliver more than 300Mbit/s download and 30-50Mbit/s upload speeds. Also see commentaries from Light Reading, Total Telecom and ZDnet.
• Sckipio announced three new G.fast technologies: the world’s first G.fast distribution point unit (DPU) that supports up to 24 subscribers in a single DPU, the first single-port G.fast distribution point unit (DPU) reference design to provide up to 1Gbit/s of symmetrical broadband over existing coax and copper wiring and implementation of the world’s first collective dynamic time assignment (DTA) technology running on a 16-port vectored G.fast DPU: “This will allow broadband subscribers to gain access to the highest possible upstream and downstream capabilities that G.fast has to offer.” Also see commentary from ISP Review.