BT on Tuesday came out fighting in favour of copper, revealing it has reached connection speeds topping 5 Gbps using XG.fast technology.
The tests were carried out in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent at the U.K. incumbent’ s Adastral Park R&D centre in Suffolk. It achieved aggregate speeds of 5.6 Gbps over 35 metres of BT cable, a new record for full-duplex data transmission over a standard single line, according to the telco.
At more than 100 metres, the speed dropped substantially, albeit to a still impressive 1.8 Gbps. BT said this is significant because most U.K. homes are within 100 metres of their nearest distribution point.
"These are exciting results. We know that G.fast will transform the U.K.’s broadband landscape but these results also give us confidence the technology has significant headroom should we need it in the future," said Mike Galvin, managing director of next generation access at BT, in a statement.
XG.fast, first shown off by the Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs division in 2014, works similarly to G.fast by significantly increasing the frequency range used to transmit data over copper. While G.fast uses a range of 106 MHz and reaches speeds of up to 500 Mbps, XG.fast uses up to 500 MHz and can reach substantially higher speeds.
The trade-off though is that the performance of XG.fast degrades significantly over distances longer than 100 metres, whereas G.fast can sustain faster speeds over longer lengths of copper.
Many industry commentators argue that new copper technologies like G.fast and XG.fast will simply delay the inevitable requirement to upgrade to all-fibre networks, and therefore telcos should forego them and focus entirely on fibre instead.
"Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology has a role to play," conceded Galvin on Tuesday. "But G.fast is the answer if the U.K. is to have widespread and affordable ultrafast broadband sooner rather than later. Those who argue otherwise aren’t being realistic."
He cited Australia as an example where the government has changed course from a next-generation network led by FTTP, to a multi-technology mix led by fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC).
However, judging by a recent speech given by Australia’s shadow communications minister Jason Clare, another change of government could swing the pendulum back towards FTTP.
Meanwhile, BT is pushing ahead with G.fast, conducting trials with customers in Huntingdon and Gosforth. The telco said that users there are receiving downlink speeds of up to 330 Mbps.
BT reiterated its plan to begin commercially rolling it out alongside its FTTC and FTTP services in 2016/17. The aim is to deploy ultrafast broadband to 10 million premises by the end of 2020, and to most of the U.K. by 2025.
"G.fast is the ideal technology as it can be deployed at scale and speed, allowing as many people to benefit a soon as possible," Galvin said.
