Australia’s National Broadband Network-NBN-is turning to fast copper technology to deliver bigger speeds.
The NBN Co-responsible for building the country’s fast broadband network-is partnering with Nokia to
trial XG-FAST over the copper network.
XG-FAST is the next generation version of Nokia’s G.fast technology that has been shown to deliver multi-gigabit speeds over copper.
The NBN Co. is the third operator in the world to put the technology to work in the real world as country’s find creating fibre only networks far more expensive and complex than first forecast.
Australia’s proposed NBN is no exception. From an initial vision of fibre directly to most homes and businesses, the NBN has undergone a number of revisions to now include a ‘multi-technology’ approach so that most will get fibre to a ‘node’ in the street-or FTTN-and copper links from there.
NBN Co chief technology officer Dennis Steiger recently announced the trial, saying it’s the latest attempt by the company to deliver high speeds for less on a copper network that has proven to be “robust”.
“XG-FAST could offer us a much faster and cost effective way to deliver multi-gigabit speed to premises on our network, aside from trying to connect them all to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology,” he said.