ITU Readies New 1Gbit/s Broadband Standard

Geneva – G.fast, a new ITU broadband standard that promises up to 1 Gbit/s over existing copper telephone wires, is one step closer following a meeting of ITU-T Study Group 15 this week. G.fast is designed to deliver superfast downloads up to a distance of 250 meters (820 feet), thereby eliminating the expense of installing fiber between the distribution point and people’s homes.

The Geneva meeting saw first-stage approval of ITU standard, Recommendation ITU-T G.9700, that specifies methods to minimize the risk of G.fast equipment interfering with broadcast services such as FM radio, paving the way for G.fast to be approved in early 2014.

G.fast is expected to be deployed by service providers wanting to provide FTTH-like services, which will enable flexible upstream and downstream speeds to support bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming Ultra-HDTV movies, uploading high-resolution video and photo libraries to cloud-based storage, and communicating via HD video.

The G.fast work has attracted active participation by a large number of leading service providers, chip manufacturers, and system vendors.

G.Fast to Enable Self-Installation Efficiencies
An important feature of G.fast is that it will enable self-installation by consumers without a technician’s assistance. For service providers, self-install eliminates the expense of deploying technicians to the consumer’s home, thereby also improving the speed at which they can rollout new services. Consumers will benefit from not having to arrange to be at home for a technician’s visit.

“G.fast is an important standard for service providers globally,” said Tom Starr, chairman of ITU-T Study Group 15, Working Party 1, which oversees the G.fast effort. “Service providers will be able to deliver fibre-like performance more quickly and more affordably than with any other approach.”