Positive potential for ‘ultrafast’ copper broadband

Just when we thought we’d pushed copper as far as it could go, we’re excited to unveil the results of new field trials. Until now, it was thought that getting ‘ultrafast’ broadband speeds needed a dedicated business line or a fibre connection all the way from the exchange.

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.

You can read the full press release here