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BT Unveils 1000Mbps Capable G.fast Broadband Rollout For the United Kingdom
Mark.JUK writes The national telecoms operator for the United Kingdom, BT, has today announced that it will begin a country-wide deployment of the next generation hybrid-fibre G.fast (ITU G.9701) broadband technology from 2016/17, with most homes being told to expect speeds of up to 500Mbps (Megabits per second) and a premium service offering 1000Mbps will also be available.
At present BT already covers most of the UK with hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which delivers download speeds of up to 80Mbps by running a fibre optic cable to a local street cabinet and then using VDSL2 over the remaining copper line from the cabinet to homes. G.fast follows a similar principal, but it brings the fibre optic cable even closer to homes (often by installing smaller remote nodes on telegraph poles) and uses more radio spectrum (17-106MHz) over a shorter remaining run of copper cable (ideally less than 250 metres). The reliance upon copper cable means that the real-world speeds for some, such as those living furthest away from the remote nodes, will probably struggle to match up to BT's claims. Nevertheless many telecoms operators see this as being a more cost effective approach to broadband than deploying a pure fibre optic / Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.
At present BT already covers most of the UK with hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which delivers download speeds of up to 80Mbps by running a fibre optic cable to a local street cabinet and then using VDSL2 over the remaining copper line from the cabinet to homes. G.fast follows a similar principal, but it brings the fibre optic cable even closer to homes (often by installing smaller remote nodes on telegraph poles) and uses more radio spectrum (17-106MHz) over a shorter remaining run of copper cable (ideally less than 250 metres). The reliance upon copper cable means that the real-world speeds for some, such as those living furthest away from the remote nodes, will probably struggle to match up to BT's claims. Nevertheless many telecoms operators see this as being a more cost effective approach to broadband than deploying a pure fibre optic / Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.
My local telephone exchange has been enabled for fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) for a year and a half
The street cabinet my line connects to has not been upgraded. I can't even physically find the damn thing, no idea where they've hidden it. Maybe BT doesn't either. Nobody can tell me when or if it will be enabled.
I can get 4G LTE on my phone and get 30 Mbit/sec up or down. But ADSL2 is as fast as I can get - with the distance from my exchange to my house, I get no more than 9 Mbit/sec down (but more often than not closer to 6 Mbit/sec) and no more than 1 Mbit/sec up.
I'm all in favour of gigabit broadband rollouts - but I want them to finish the FTTC programme first.
Also - I live in the middle of a city of 230,000 people, and the area I'm in is entirely residential. They'd get more fibre subscribers if they enabled more cabinets.
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
"At present BT already covers most of the UK with hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology"
That's bullshit for a start, the rest likely is too