The Broadband Forum announced the launch of the Gfast Council, established with the goal of centralising and disseminating expertise and experience relating to the G.fast market to support the deployment of G.fast technology.
To facilitate the roll-out of solutions based on G.fast technology, which enable the provision of gigabit broadband access over existing wiring infrastructure, the new Gfast Council will hold industry events, issue white papers, detail use cases and provide other resources to promote adoption of the technology.
The council will also promote the Gfast Certification program, which has announced the first certified, interoperable products, to help accelerate the availability of interoperable solutions and aid integration into service provider networks.
Open to all Broadband Forum members, the Gfast council will represent the Broadband Forum and the Gfast community at industry events such as the TNO Ultrafast broadband event held this week in The Hague.
Separately, the Broadband Forum announced the first six products to have successfully completed the new Gfast certification program, hosted in the forum's Gfast test lab at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), in accordance with the forum's IR-337 certification test specification.
The initial products certified under the program are from ARRIS, Calix, Huawei, Metanoia, Nokia and Technicolor, and have been awarded the Gfast device certification. The first products to be certified are based on chipsets from Broadcom, Metanoia and Sckipio.
In addition, the UNH-IOL has made the Gfast test automation software commercially available. The software controls the Telebyte test and measurement equipment, enabling device manufacturers to pre-test devices in their own labs and service providers to regression test software updates from vendors.
