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ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015
alphadogg writes "The ITU has taken a big step in the standardization of G.fast, a broadband technology capable of achieving download speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper telephone wire. The death of copper and the ascent of fiber has long been discussed. However, the cost of rolling out fiber is still too high for many operators that instead want to upgrade their existing copper networks. So there is still a need for technologies that can complement fiber, including VDSL2 and G.fast. Higher speeds are needed for applications such as 4K streaming, IPTV, cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video, ITU said." Meanwhile, I'm hoping Google Fiber, FIOS, and other fast optical options scare more ISPs into action along both price and speed axes.
DAMN... at least once every 10 years pick a broadband solution and BUILD IT ALL THE WAY OUT. To every last house in the US. This never ending cycle of new technology coming out and being bult out to the edges of the big cities and then the next new technology hits and they stop where they are go back to the center of the big cities and start building out again.
Just once. Get something other than dialup and satellite all the way out to every last house in the US.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
I'm stuck in copper-land thanks to the phone monopoly in my town, and the copper we have can't reliably transfer data at faster than 8Mbps. 15Mbps was great when it worked, but the disconnects were frequent. The residents in my town are never going to see gigabit speeds over our copper infrastructure. The phone company has no reason to improve it. There is no fiber alternative, Verizon pulled out of our state. Our cable TV monopoly is equally disinterested in provided higher speed service. This is probably a significant challenge all over the United States. We need to find a way to revive competition and get these legally-sole-provider-in-the-region companies to offer improved service.
DirecTV forced cable companies to up their HD offerings by making over a hundred channels HD in one go after launching some new satellites. Before that, none of the cable MSOs would bother. We need a similar antagonist in the ISP space.
These limitations might keep the others from getting too scared;
"The drawback with G.fast is that it will only work over short distances, so 1Gbps will only be possible at distances of up to about 100 meters. The technology is being designed to work at distances up to 250 meters, though transmission speed is slower at that distace. "
OK. So long as G.fast is an improvement over what they're using now, that's a good thing. But until/unless I can get 1 gbps at my desktop, I don't think they should be allowed to advertise it as "Gigabit Internet."
This is the typical phone company thing... "buy Internet service from us!" How fast will it be at my house? "Um, we have no idea!"
"1 Gb/s over copper" is something that's existed for a looong time.
1 Gb/s over a single crap twisted pair copper on the other hand...