nbn’s lab trials of ground breaking new copper acceleration technology, XG.FAST, have achieved a peak aggregate speed of 8Gbps over 30 metres of twisted-pair copper. This equates to around 900 times faster than the average broadband speed of 8.5Mbps being delivered to Australians in 2Q16 according to the latest Akamai State of the Internet Report.
nbn is only the third operator in the global market to run lab trials of XG.FAST, following in the footsteps of BT last year and Deutsche Telekom in February.
The Australian XG.FAST lab trials were conducted at nbn headquarters in North Sydney with vendor, Nokia, in September.
nbn and Nokia were also able to achieve outstanding speeds over longer copper lengths with 5Gbps peak aggregate speed being achieved over 70 metres of twisted-pair copper – which would be roughly three times the average length of copper lead-in from pit to premises.
XG.FAST can be deployed across a range of scenarios in the field – delivering ultra-fast speeds to either Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) in a Fibre-to-the-Building (FTTB) scenario or via a Distribution Point Unit (DPU) in a Fibre-to-the Curb (FTTC) based network.
In late September nbn announced its intention to deploy FTTC services to approximately 700,000 premises on the nbn network.
Dennis Steiger, CTO of nbn Australia
Although XG.FAST is still in its very early stages of development the lab trials we have conducted demonstrates the huge potential that the technology offers. XG.FAST gives us the potential ability to deliver multi-gigabit speeds over copper lines - virtually on a par with what is currently available on Fibre-to-the-Premises - but at a lower cost and time to deploy. While our core goal remains to connect 8 million premises to the nbn by 2020 we are keeping a close eye on new technologies like XG.FAST to ensure we can meet the future bandwidth demands of Australian broadband users.
