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BT trials ultrafast broadband using copper cables

by Mark Tyson on 26 September 2014, 14:05

Tags: British Telecom (LON:BT.A), Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei

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BT has announced that it has achieved speeds approaching a combined one Gigabit per second using existing copper wire telephone cables. The technology is called Fibre To The Distribution Point (FTTdp) or 'G.FAST' and it only requires fibre to be rolled out to telephone poles or junction (footway) boxes rather than direct to homes and businesses.

In BT's trials, at its Adastral Park R&D centre in Ipswich, it achieved "downstream speeds of around 800Mbps… combined with upstream speeds of more than 200Mbps". This was over a 19m length of copper wire. Over 66m of copper, speeds of "around 700/200Mbps" were achieved. This longer distance would encompass around 80 per cent of connections, we are told.

Right now BT fibre connections pass by more than 20 million UK homes and offices and employ a mix of both Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) and Fibre to the Cabinet technology (FTTC). The current FTTP speeds are measured in Gb/s but the more common FTTC connection speeds are anchored around about the 100Mb/s region.

BT explains the greater speeds are mostly down to the shorter copper wire attachment distances, "With FTTdp, the fibre is closer to the premises than with FTTC, meaning the copper link is much shorter. G.FAST technology is then used to maximise data capacity over the copper and uses much higher frequencies, plus advanced ‘crosstalk’ cancellation techniques, to make ultrafast speeds possible." FTTdp is also said to be more cost effective and simpler to implement than FTTP or dedicated Ethernet lines. Less optical fibre and engineering is required and users could do a 'self install' as long as they have the regular telephone connection available.

Looking at time scales, G.FAST is still months away from being available to customers. In the next few months BT researchers will explore the capabilities of G.FAST and get it to work with hardware from the likes of Adtran, Alcatel Lucent and Huawei. There are efforts to standardise the tech worldwide and the G.9701 standard is expected to be completed in December. With refinement of the tech G.FAST speeds are expected to achieve even faster transfer speeds.



HEXUS Forums :: 24 Comments

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Stop wasting time and money and just run fibre to the home, higher initial cost but lasting infrastructure.

This drives me bonkers!
They aren't wasting money, they are saving it. The majority of people aren't prepared to pay the cost of FTTP.
I'm sure this is wonderful but it's also a bit of a mystical pink unicorn, given how many houses still don't have any kind of fibre at all, it's hard to see how this will improve things, save for those who already have the fastest available connectivity.
Me and my family are on BT (They are the only internet provider in our area as we live quite rurally) and we are only getting 100 kbps (yes you read that correctly) between 5 of us. This is barely enough to stream a Youtube video in 360p. Instead of making new ways of increasing speeds to people who already have good speeds, why not actually focus on improving areas of the country that have internet speeds slower than some third world countries. Please sort out your priorities BT! We are not amused! ]:(
Sladey93
Me and my family are on BT (They are the only internet provider in our area as we live quite rurally) and we are only getting 100 kbps (yes you read that correctly) between 5 of us. This is barely enough to stream a Youtube video in 360p. Instead of making new ways of increasing speeds to people who already have good speeds, why not actually focus on improving areas of the country that have internet speeds slower than some third world countries. Please sort out your priorities BT! We are not amused! ]:(

That really sucks but unfortunately for as long as they're the only provider in your area you've probably got next to no chance. I'd start hoping for more competition rather than for BT to do anything to improve it out out of the kindness of their hearts.

Is satellite broadband not a possibility? I can't say I've had any experience with it but this article - while far from the best in the world - makes it seem like less of ridiculous idea than it initially sounds.