back to article First gigabit-over-COPPER chipset lands

Israeli outfit Sckipio has revealed what it claims is the world's first G.fast chipset. G.fast is widely seen as a successor standard to VDSL, as it delivers broadband over telcos' existing copper connections, but can do so at up to a gigabit-per-second. That's a speed comparable with that achievable over hybrid fiber coax ( …

  1. Bush_rat
    Megaphone

    Flog that horse!

    Flog it damn you! Flog it!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      With a Gigabit connection

      It's the a horse that people will be flogging..............

  2. P. Lee
    Paris Hilton

    Wrong solution?

    Ok, I'd like gigabit and I don't care how it arrives, but I don't think its the people with cable connections who have the last-mile speed problems.

    If they could do it over telephone wire then great, but if you're going to lay new cables, why not fibre? Are you going to put in new node kit and not go fibre?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong solution?

      I have FTTH and have Gigabit to the house. FTTH has it's own challenges that can be problematic to retrofit to older homes; mine was built with FTTH in mind. You do need to power the box on the side of the house and have CAT5E or better coming in as well.

      G.FAST allows the existing copper in the home to be used, that is the advantage. The telco doesn't own the wiring in the home, you do. The next question on G.FAST, where does the power come to run the DPU?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Wrong solution?

        Presumably the telco either provides power along with the fiber cable to the DPU (similar to how cable companies supply power along with their fiber) or utility power is used. I don't see why power should present a problem.

        1. bazza Silver badge

          Re: Wrong solution?

          @DougS,

          "Presumably the telco either provides power along with the fiber cable to the DPU (similar to how cable companies supply power along with their fiber) or utility power is used. I don't see why power should present a problem."

          I was speaking to some telco guys here in the UK recently, and it seems power is a minor problem with FTTC.

          Whilst there is indeed a fibre running from the exchange to the cabinet and the VDSL runs over the last few meters of copper to the house, the plain old telephone system still goes via copper all the way from the exchange to the house. The reason being that the telco has to provide an emergency phone service.

          To do that with the POTS also going over fibre to the exchange the cabinet would have to have a reliable emergency power supply. Apparently they don't get because they're plumbed into the mains locally.

          However with the POTS being copper all the way it is powered in the normal way, i.e. powered entirely from the exchange. The idea is that if the mains goes off the cabinet shuts down but the POTS still runs. A side effect is that BT cannot rip out all that copper cabling from under the streets and sell it on as scrap.

          So it would seem probable that in the UK at least that the DPUs would be in the FTTC cabinet powered by a local grid connection rather than by a power connection run from the exchange.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @bazza

            Obviously the regulations in the UK would be different, and I don't know the exact details, but I do know where I am in the US there is a UPS in the cabinet that is supposed to cover POTS in the event of power loss, so I assume the copper no longer runs all the way back. I don't know what the UPS is covering - if the cabinet is utility powered or CO powered. Perhaps both.

      2. BlackKnight(markb)

        Re: Wrong solution?

        In this FTTN solutions, the node is powered and usually has a UPS (you hope) you get power over the telephone cables enough to power a phone anyway.

        if not same issue with FTTP, you better bring a backup power source for your premise side equipment

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Wrong solution?

      @P. Lee,

      "If they could do it over telephone wire then great, but if you're going to lay new cables, why not fibre? Are you going to put in new node kit and not go fibre?"

      Ah, it doesn't mean replacing any existing cabling if a network like Fibre-To-The-Cabinet (FTTC) has already been rolled out. With FTTC there's a fibre laid from the exchange to a cabinet at the end of a street of houses, with the existing copper used for the last few yards to the houses.

      BT are rolling out FTTC in quite a large way in the UK. This new technology would allow them to upgrade from, say 40Mbps to 1Gbps by doing nothing more than changing the equipment in the cabinets and homes. That's a relatively cheap thing to do. It would be on a par with FTTH's performance but at a fraction of the installation costs.

      And yes, if there's not even FTTC in the area then the economics are different, but it's still cheaper to go the FTTC route than the full FTTH. It's easier to lay a single fibre to a cabinet than to lay one into every subsciber's home; much less manpower required.

    3. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: Wrong solution?

      FTTH is a completely solved problem. Bell Aliant (eastern Canada) is doing it. Not Gb, but 175 Mbps in my case.

      They outsource running the fibre to the curb. Later, a technician shows up to run the fibre from the pole to the side of the house; this is only about an hour's work. The cable was precut and terminated back at headquarters, length presumably based on something like Google Maps. Another technician shows up to drill a wee hole in the wall, and pokes the fiber inside. Indoors there's three boxes to screw to the wall. He's gone in about two hours, but they might need all day in the worst case where they're doing a complete TV installation. The telephone/ISP company can now offer 'Cable TV' (by fiber) a new market that probably pays for the whole thing.

      The fibers can reach a reported 40km, and each fiber can feed 16 homes.

      The delta between FTTC and FTTH is about an hour's work (the tech stringing the fiber down the driveway). Maybe two. The rest is common to both approaches.

      There will be more difficult circumstances, where the only wires into an apartment building are buried below a national monument and can NEVER be changed. You have my sympathy.

      1. Fluffy Bunny

        Re: Wrong solution?

        "Later, a technician shows up to run the fibre from the pole to the side of the house". You make an interesting point. Your telco only actually runs fibre to the homes of people who order the service. Why, then, is the NBN (in Australia) running it to everybody?

        1. BlackKnight(markb)

          Re: Wrong solution?

          Because NBN do not own the existing infrastructure and were replacing it under signed contract with Telstra.

          Ie you maintain your network until we install, you then rip it out when were up and running. you legally must have access to a working phone line, so NBN co have to make sure you have one when telstra rips there line out

  3. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

    What's the point in the last link to the home being so fast when the rest of the links in the chain cannot cope already once all the school kids get home?

    1. BlackKnight(markb)

      fibre connections back to the ISP from the DPU or whatever node you use will typically be around 10gb + connections, so even if all the school kids hog it with 16houses connected you should still get about 75% throughput from there. your real bottle neck will be with the ISP's gateway to the rest of the world, not the node on the street.

  4. Tom 7

    Cheap gigabit fibre has been possible since the late 80's

    And it doesn’t go all shitty when it rains.

    @bazza Its likely to be more reliable in terms of 999 calls if it can actually connect too - i was off for a few hours this weekend even though there was power and connection. And as for cost - well I've had some 200 hours of maintenance on my line over the last 8 years all because of water getting into the system. And I expect the same over the next few years until I finally get FTTH.

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