The role of G.Fast in New Zealand’s fibre future  

G.fast broadband is causing a huge buzz in Europe and to a lesser extent across the Tasman. The excitement is based on G.fast’s ability to deliver “fibre like” speeds of 100Mbps or more over copper. Many international operators are either conducting trials with the G.fast technology or committing to deploy G.fast in 2015, which raises a critical question – is this an option New Zealand should consider?  

Our analysis has led to one simple conclusion: fibre to the home to 75 percent of New Zealand alleviates the need for G.fast broadband. As a high speed copper solution, G.fast could be worth considering for non-UFB areas, but essentially the technology is designed for urban areas. It has significant technical limitations for low density regional or rural areas. Any evaluation of G.fast in New Zealand will have to very carefully consider if it can deliver the scale and benefits that outweigh the additional cost and complexity of introducing (yet another) technology.   

What is G.fast?

G.fast is the latest generation of copper broadband technology, faster than VDSL at 100Mbps or more.but its speed can be highly variable and unpredictable. On very short copper loops it is theoretically possible for G.fast to get speeds of up to 1Gbps, but as with all copper broadband technologies as the distance gets longer, the speed drops dramatically. The performance of G.fast depends greatly on very short and very high quality copper. It achieves its speed by transmitting signals at a much higher frequency range (up to 212MHz) than standard VDSL technology (17MHz). Signal interference and reduced signal strength become bigger issues at such high frequencies, so a noise cancellation technology called “vectoring” is essential. For G.fast to work, active electronic devices (micro DSLAMs) must be installed within 100 metres of a customer’s premises – it is effectively like putting a mini fibre-fed cabinet at the letterbox. Unlike fibre broadband, these field devices require electricity which is an added challenge.

The industry standard for the first version of G.fast (106MHz) was approved in December 2014 and the second version (212MHz) is due in 2016. There is likely to be a lot of tests, trials and pilots over the next year or two before G.fast is mature enough to be rolled out on a large scale.

Why are operators so excited by G.fast?

Many European operators have large copper networks and are under pressure from cable TV, fibre and mobile network competitors to offer faster broadband speeds. Cable operators routinely market 150Mbps to 250Mbps services soVDSL at around 50Mbps doesn’t compete G.fast technology enables Telco operators to incrementally and selectively evolve their copper network rather than ubiquitously overbuilding it with fibre. While G.fast can be used in a suburban scenario to provide services to standalone dwellings, the biggest potential use case is for apartment blocks and other high density housing complexes. Fibre to the basement with G.fast removes the need to run fibre into every apartment, increasing the speed of installation and reducing connection costs with less impact on the customer. G.fast is far less suitable in rural and low density population areas due to the high cost of building and maintaining lots of electronic devices located in pits and cabinets. For new subdivisions, Fibre-to-the-Home is always the preferred option. G.fast provides European operators with another useful tool in their multi-technology toolkit.  In Australia, NBN started out with a fibre strategy for 93% of the country but have recently changed tack to a multi-technology mix that is dominated by higher speed copper variants.   

What about G.fast in New Zealand?

New Zealand is a small country with a relatively low population density so the optimal scenarios for G.fast are few and far between.  We have evaluated it with an open mind, but our experience shows that building and maintaining lots of electronic devices in the field is not a low cost option and will not provide ubiquitous service experience. The Government’s UFB policy is pretty clear – a fibre network covering 75 per cent of the population, and a recent announcement to extend it to 80 per cent. We’re almost halfway through achieving this target.

The sheer scale of the project – one of the largest civil works ever undertaken in New Zealand – and clarity of purpose has enabled us to find innovative fibre solutions for the same issues that other operators are trying to solve with G.fast. From our perspective, G.fast is taking the life of copper broadband to its limits but ultimately fibre is the superior technology.  Fibre is future proof; broadband speeds can be upgraded to 1Gbps and well above as demand grows. G.fast holds great promise for the copper network operators in Europe not yet ready to make the full leap to fibre. But at this point it is hard to see where it can fit in fibre-fed New Zealand.

By Kurt Rodgers, Network Strategy