Huawei does 1Gbps over 100 metres of phone network copper

Stuart Corner
Monday, 19 December 2011 14:22

Business IT - Networking

In news that will be music to the ears of staunch NBN opponent and fibre to the node advocate, shadow communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Huawei claims to have developed technology that deliver 1Gbps over a distance of 100 metres of copper telephone lines.

This figure is the combined up and downstream bandwidth - which could be split in any ratio. At greater distances bandwidth drops off significantly, but Huawei is still claiming 500Mbps (up and down combined) over 200 metres.

According to Huawei, the technology, Giga DSL, is a next-generation access technology solution that is growing quickly. "In 2011, ITU-T set up a G.fast project team dedicated to formulating new standards for ultra-speed access at short distances, the aim being to achieve 500Mbps access rate per twisted pair within 100 metres," Huawei says.

The company says it "actively participated in the work of the team and has become a major technical contributor, having recently worked to incorporate TDD-OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) as a G.fast modulation mode."

According to the April 2011 edition of 'Broadband' - the journal of the Society for Broadband Professionals - the initiative for 'giga dsl' (also dubbed 4G broadband or 4GBB) came from the Broadband Forum's Service Provider Action Council, which developed a white paper and a presentation on the subject. This, it says, took the idea to a wider audience resulting in liaison with the ITU-T study Group 15.

"In February 2011 ITU-T SG15 started a new work item (dubbed G.fast) as a response to that. The word fast stands for 'fast access to subscriber terminals' and the work item concentrates on a transceiver that users frequencies considerably above 300MHz)(probably up to a couple of MHz)."

There is little public information on G.fast on the ITU's web site. However there is a Facebook page dedicated to the 'G.fast at ITU-T' work project, but it presently contains no information.