G.fast start to fade away

Five ISPs GreenISP, Ghost Gaming ISP, Structured Communications, Trunk Network and Zen Internet has stopped sell G.fast. I expecting other ISP's are to follow shortly. Plusnet are the only ISP never release G.fast product.

G.fast ISP's still selling:

BT
EE
IDNet
Pulse8
UnchainedISP
TalkTalk
Sky
AAISP
Webmate ISP
Freeola
Cerberus

Edited by adslmax (Sat 04-Sep-21 02:46:43)

I doubt they'll stop selling until Openreach pull the plug on the technology which won't be for sometime/

They spent a large amount of money on this exercise, and won't stop until they recoup their losses.

It'll be like ADSL / LLU. Openreach will continue to support it, but the CPs will slowly move away over time as they lose interest in supporting it. When nobody's using it, it will go.

Of course, in any areas which are subject to copper stop-sell and switchoff (which is different from PSTN stop-sell and switchoff) this will also move any remaining G.Fast users to FTTP.

Exactly, and I'd say at this point that most people who want and are going to get G.Fast have it.

New G.Fast customers from now on will mostly be home movers and that's a small enough market that small ISPs will save money by simplifying their marketing, provisioning and issue of CPE etc.

There is nothing wrong with the technology when used on a good copper pair - short lines can achieve 330/50. The rollout is limited though, about 2.8m premises passed, and of those many won't achieve more than 160/30... so it's also a hard sell if competing with VM speeds or an altnet FTTP.

If a customer wants to go with Green ISP they'll probably go with them on 80/20. Seems like a very understandable business decision to discontinue G.Fast.

In reply to a post by ft247:

Exactly, and I'd say at this point that most people who want and are going to get G.Fast have it.

I cannot get it and its not because i live in the middle of nowhere.

Anyone know roughly how many active subscribers are on G.Fast? The premises passed figure capped out around 2.8 million or so, but if CPs are now stopping selling it…

Announcing its death is a be premature

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Anyone know roughly how many active subscribers are on G.Fast?

Yes, it's published in the BT quarterly results. The most recent is "First quarter to 30 June 2021" published here. Page 9 gives you network deployment and utilisation.

As of that date, G.Fast passed 2.831m properties and there were 234,000 total active G.Fast connections - up from 98,000 a year previously and 36,000 a year before that.

EDIT: for comparison FTTP has 5.165m properties passed and 1.086m takeup. FTTP footprint has been growing rapidly while G.Fast has been static, although 2 years ago they had similar coverage, at 2.166m G.Fast properties passed versus 1.514m FTTP.

Edited by candlerb (Sat 04-Sep-21 18:23:15)

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

In reply to a post by ft247:

Exactly, and I'd say at this point that most people who want and are going to get G.Fast have it.

I cannot get it and its not because i live in the middle of nowhere.

If you can't get it now, then you're never going to get it, because the G.Fast rollout has been terminated. You'll have to wait for FTTP to arrive instead.

The point being made was: because the footprint of G.Fast has been more or less static for the last 2 years, most people who are have coverage and are interested in taking it up will have done so already. If they were waiting for their existing contract to expire before switching, they have had time to do so.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

G.Fast passed 2.831m properties and there were 234,000 total active G.Fast connections

Probably more connections than Green, Ghost, Structured, Trunk and Zen total customer numbers across all tech types added together. Probably way more than the total customer numbers on the CityFibre platform.

BT, Sky and TalkTalk are using GFast and that is the overwhelming majority of the market. It is proving reliable and the monthly speedtest results on TB show it regularly outperforming some of the forum's favourite provider's FTTP products.

Edited by FibreBubble (Sat 04-Sep-21 18:36:06)