Openreach G.fast roll-out to start in 2016/2017

We went at looked at some pre-release G.fast hardware at the BT test labs in 2014 and now three months later Openreach is announcing an ultrafast future with deployment starting in 2016/2017 some eight years after FTTC started to be rolled out.

G.fast is being described as delivering up to 500 Mbps and the BT ambition is to have this rolled out to most of the UK within a decade, so we presume 2025, in the shorter term the talk is of availability to millions by 2020. Of course this is subject to nothing untoward turning up in some public trials, and 4,000 homes and businesses in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and Gosforth, Newcastle will be able to take part in two pilot roll-outs in Summer 2015. This will build on the core work at Ad Astral park and help to train staff and verify that the expected speeds can be delivered.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6810-openreach-g-...

Anybody else surprised by this? I expected BT to really drag their feet.

Could explain why they seem to be pulling back on FTTPoD - why would people bother if there is a realistic prospect of significantly faster speeds in the next few years.

Now that I've digested it more not so surprised as the roll-out looks like it'll take a while.

I am dreading all the complaints about the 'digital divide' that will inevitably result from a protracted roll-out period though.

People who were screaming blue murder over a few tens of Megabits will be incandescent over a differential of 400.

If anyone is honest even if Openreach had committed to a national FTTH roll-out back in 2009 we would be well below 22 million homes passed and with a much larger divide.

Given current staffing levels, my guess would be they might manage 2 million homes FTTH passed per year, and for little extra ROI for something that would probably cost more too.

Also am sure Openreach has looked at the information on proportions of people buying higher speed options at Virgin and other altnets and the signs are that while 5 to 10% may buy the fastest option, the bulk go for the lower speeds.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

I am dreading all the complaints about the 'digital divide' that will inevitably result from a protracted roll-out period though.

That is pretty much the same as the comment I posted on the TBB news article.

I don't understand how this technology works, as I understand it our copper lines from our homes go straight back to a street cabinet that has the fibre connection to the exchange.

So with G.fast if you put a local fibre node much closer to homes than the cabinet then won't all the homes have to have their copper lines moved to connect to this node instead?

especially if it excludes ECI

The node can even go in the cabinet, or closer to the homes, location will vary.

But the homes the node will potentially serve will have their copper going via the node, even if they are not buying G.Fast

http://blog.thinkbroadband.com/2014/10/g-fast-shows-... shows some of the hardware and how they can get VDSL2 to co-exist with G.Fast, and they even demo a VDSL2 user switching to G.Fast seamlessly, i.e. if you have a modem that understands G.Fast the switch over can be done remotely.

I assume that those of us with (or soon to have) FTTP will also benefit from increased speeds at a reasonable cost. Otherwise FTTP could become the slow option rather than the fast option.

How many lines could those nodes cover? The original kit was only able to support 4 lines. I would hope that there have been improvements since then.