More than four in five service provider respondents to a Broadbandtrends survey say they have 2018 Gfast deployment plans, with 27% in live deployments. Broadbandtrends’ Global Service Provider G.fast Deployment Strategies surveyed 33 incumbent and competitive broadband operators from across the globe.
The top objective for deployment of Gfast is to offer faster speeds (>250Mbps). Gfast is a fiber-to-the-distribution point (FTTdb) architecture designed to provide up to 2Gbps aggregate speeds on copper infrastructure over very short loop lengths.
Gfast Deployment Plans
Survey findings include:
- Cost remains the greater challenge facing operators planning to deploy Gfast technology.
- Fiber-to-the-Building with the DPU in the basement was cited as the top use case for 100 percent of the survey participants.
- Average downstream speeds of 500-1Gbps are expected with most Gfast service.
- 9-16 line DPUs remain the “sweetspot.”
- Support for the 1Gbps aggregate speed; extend bandwidth at 212MHz; and Dynamic Timeslot Assignment were considered the most important emerging/ newly available Gfast capabilities.
“With each consecutive survey the use cases become more solidified with MDU deployments continuing to drive the bulk of Gfast deployments; but it is the ability to offer faster speeds that remains the top objective for operator interest in Gfast,” said Teresa Mastrangelo, Broadbandtrends principal analyst, in a prepared statement.
