But, ‘copper load’ of this (you’ll see what we did there in
a minute), as the latest trials show ‘ultrafast’ broadband with combined speeds
of up to a massive one Gigabit per second (1000Mbps), can be delivered via a
mix of fibre and copper cables.
During the trials we used a 19m length of copper, and
recorded huge downstream speeds of around 800Mbps and upstream speeds of more
than 200Mbps.
Because we can roll out this technology to telephone poles
or junction boxes, close to homes and business it has some big advantages over
other more disruptive options.
Firstly, the G.Fast FTTDP technology might be cheaper and easier
to install. Because less fibre and less engineering is needed, ‘ultrafast’
broadband could even be installed by your customers themselves, avoiding the
need for any home engineering visits.
These results have come through just when we’re about to
open a new ultrafast broadband lab at our Adastral Park R&D centre in
Ipswich. Over the coming months, our researchers will be based here while they
study the full technical capabilities of G.Fast hardware.
