New ITU broadband standard fast-tracks route to 1Gbit/s

International Telecommunication Union membership has reached first-stage approval of G.fast, the new ITU broadband standard capable of achieving access speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s over existing telephone wires. Within 250-metre range of a distribution point, G.fast’s fiber-like speeds give service providers a tool to supplement and further monetize fiber to the home (FTTH) strategies with the customer self-installation benefits of ADSL2.

G.fast, within the fiber to the distribution point (FTTdp) architecture, combines the best aspects of fiber and ADSL2. Consumers will have an over-the-counter solution, self-installed without a technician’s assistance, but equipped to support bandwidth-intensive services such as Ultra-HD ‘4K’ or ‘8K’ streaming and IPTV, advanced cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video. The physical-layer protocol aspects of G.fast defined by Recommendation ITU-T G.9701 “Fast Access to Subscriber Terminals - Physical layer specification” have reached the point of stability required to initiate the standard’s approval procedure. Chip manufacturers will now scale-up G.fast chip design and testing efforts, feeding results of this work into ITU-T Study Group 15 in the interests of finalizing G.fast as early as April 2014.