Telkom South Africa's wholesale division Openserve and Nokia have recently conducted a trial of G.fast technology in an office complex in Pinelands, South Africa, reaching fiber-like speeds over existing copper infrastructure as deployed in buildings.
This trial is a dry-run for Openserve's commercial deployment of G.fast later this year, meaning it will soon join the top 10 companies worldwide deploying the technology, part of its drive to rapidly expand its footprint across South Africa.
The results of the trial demonstrated an aggregate bandwidth (upstream and downstream) of 900Mb/s on short copper loops, and speeds of 500Mb/s downstream and 250Mb/s upstream on an existing copper line at a distance of 150m.
Nokia's G.fast technology uses the last few hundred meters of existing copper located in a building to deliver ultra-broadband access to customers. The built-in vectoring technology reduces cross-talk interference between copper lines, hence improving data speeds.
The Operator also announced plans to offer speeds of up to 100Mbps to traditional DSL users leveraging the G.fast technology.
Alphonzo Samuels, CEO, Openserve
We completed testing Nokia's G.fast technology in our labs, and are extremely pleased with the results. G.fast provides us with a great alternative in scenarios where the length of the copper tail is 150m or less. Moreover, the business case is convincing.
Daniel Jaeger, Head of Central, East and West Africa, Nokia
Service providers are grappling with different technologies to meet the ever-growing demand for high-speed internet, and this innovative solution allows them to use existing infrastructure to cater to market demand.
