During lab testing with an unnamed incumbent operator's drop wires, Bell Labs showed that XG-FAST technology can deliver 1 Gbps symmetrical services over 70 meters on a single copper pair using a frequency range of 350 MHz. It achieved 10 Gbps over a distance of 30 meters by using two pairs of lines (pair bonding).
Achieving 1 Gbps symmetrical services is a major breakthrough for copper broadband. It will enable operators to provide speeds that are indistinguishable from FTTH, by bringing fibre to the curbside, wall or basement of a building and the existing copper network for the last few meters.
A spokesperson for Alcatel-Lucent said it will take at least three years to develop XG-FAST into a commercial product, not including the associated standardisation process. A challenge will be to ensure affordability of the cost per connection, as the cost of the analogue signal components increases exponentially with the use of the higher frequencies. Alcatel-Lucent said the current cost is too high and it will be a challenge to reduce this to an acceptable level for large-scale commercial developments.
