Slashdot Mirror
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.
Slashdot are posting what The Register posted two days ago, so I'll post the same comment I posted there two days ago:
I work for a UK school.
BT took nearly TWO YEARS to get a leased line to us. They were blocked from completion after we cancelled the contract because they said there was a 20th delay because "there's not enough room in the duct" followed by "there's not enough room at the exchange". You'd have thought someone might notice in two years that you had no room, eh?
We cancelled because, despite wonderful promises, prices and speeds, we never actually managed to get the line into the building.
In the meantime, I'm running a school for 400 kids on a VDSL line with ADSL backup which BT promise me can get "45Mbps" and "20Mbps" at best, respectively. Funny. Because my Smoothwall says we've never pushed more than 10Mbps for a fraction of a second and the average over the working day - with 500 users and 600 devices - is somewhere around 4MBps down and 1MBps up..
BT can make all the "maximum" speed promises they want. If you can't get it installed, or the actual download is so much less than the maximum, it's pointless. Absolutely pointless.
Ironically, I get 32Mbps download on 4G when sitting in the IT Office. If only 4G didn't have such pathetic data allowances.