An Effort to Standardize G.fast Technology is Led by Study Group from ADTRAN and ITU

What exactly is G.fast? It is a standard for digital subscriber line (DSL) under development by the ITU-T which enables aggregate uplink and downlink data rates of up to 1 Gbit/s over existing copper telephone wires shorter than 820 feet.

The ITU is a United Nations specialized agency for information and technology and stands for International Telecommunications Union. What is mentioned above is its Telecommunication Standardization Sector, or ITU-T.

ADRAN, Inc., a global provider of networking and communications equipment, hosted a meeting with the ITU and ITU-T in Huntsville, AL. It appears that the group that met had a very specific name. This group is called “Study Group 15 Question 4.”

Dr. Kevin Schneider, who is chief technology officer for ADTRAN said, “ADTRAN was honored to host the ITU-T Study Group 15 Question 4 standards meeting. In our work with service providers around the world, we see first-hand the benefit of this type of collaborative effort in shaping the standardization and adoption of new technologies. By helping standardize G.fast and proving out FTTdp deployment models, ADTRAN is helping service providers effectively expand their fiber service rollouts.”

This is the group that is responsible for developing important DSL standards such as G.fast and VDSL2. The full name of G.fast is ITU-T G.9701. The first meeting following the consent of the G.fast draft standard took place at the end of last year. Included at December’s meeting were representatives from AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, CenturyLink and Orange.

Overall, there were a total of 20 industry leaders that were represented at this meeting. Each was walked out with the task of advancing the G.fast standard. The meeting lasted for a full week and all indications were that there would be approval by the end of this year.

As devices become more efficient and faster, people expect faster speeds. To keep their customers happy, we are seeing more service providers looking to offer the fastest speeds possible. This is leading to widespread commercial deployments of Gigabit residential broadband services.

The last segment of fiber right-of-way can be expensive and time consuming. This is due to the fact that it generally has to be trenched under a street or yard, pulled through home walls or up building ducts and risers. Depending on the location, this can sometimes be a near impossible task.

The G.fast standard is directed at this Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) architecture challenge. By leveraging G.fast in roughly the last 1,000 feet ADTRAN helping service providers get to Gigabit services a lot faster.

This can be achieved because of emerging fiber deployment architectures. The use of Fiber-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdp) or Fiber-to-the-Building (FTTB) combined with ADTRAN G.fast solutions allow service providers to use the existing local wiring for houses and apartments to deliver ultra-broadband services.

It turns out that these services stack up nicely against alternative LTE-A, DOCSIS 3.1 and point-to-point FTTH deployment models. There is a major cost saving in terms of deployment, which means that in addition to delivering fast reliable service to their customers, service providers can also improve their profitability.

This leads the way for customers to be able to take advantage of a variety of FTTH deployment options. Service providers can have the added benefit of deploying a suite of FTTB Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) Optical Networking Units (ONU) to deliver ultra-broadband services into these hard to reach areas.

ADTRAN is involved with several other groups that are involved in defining FTTdp architecture and standards. It is leading the way to help get faster speeds to the customers in a way that they can still afford.