Nokia and Telkom South Africa wholesale division Openserve announced they have conducted a trial of G.fast technology in an office complex in Pinelands, South Africa, during which they achieved fibre-like access speeds over existing copper infrastructure deployed into buildings.
Nokia noted that the trial was carried out in preparation for Openserve's commercial deployment of G.fast planned for later in 2017.as part of the company's program to quickly expand its network footprint across South Africa.
The G.fast trial with Openserve demonstrated an aggregate, upstream and downstream, bandwidth of 900 Mbit/s over short copper loops, and speeds of up to 500 Mbit/s downstream and 250 Mbit/s upstream on an existing copper line over a distance of 150 metres.
Nokia's G.fast technology uses the final few hundred meters of copper within a building to deliver ultra-broadband access to end users. The solution is designed to allow Openserve to meet growing demand for fibre-like broadband speeds without significantly increasing its operational cost. The Nokia solution incorporates vectoring technology to reduce cross-talk interference between copper lines and help to increase data speeds.
Nokia noted that G.fast technology is increasingly being used in locations that are difficult or costly to reach with fibre as it allows operators to deploy fibre to the building and avoid the need to install it all the way to each individual unit. G.fast uses existing copper lines in a building, thereby also helping to reduce disruption.Nokia claims to be the leading vendor for G.fast technology, with more than 40 customer trials completed and 10 customers commercially deploying the technology worldwide, including BT Openreach in the UK, Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, A1 Telekom Austria, Energia Communications in Japan and Frontier in the U.S.
- Nokia recently announced that Frontier Communications had selected its G.fast technology to increase in-building broadband speeds for residents of apartment and multi-dwelling units (MDU) across Connecticut.
