The Broadband Forum is hoping a new specification will help service providers more easily deploy broadband to homes and businesses.
At its quarterly meeting in Porto, Portugal, the Forum agreed on a new specification that it says gives service providers the opportunity to architect a fiber-rich future offering faster broadband speeds via copper enhancing G.fast technologies, as well as VDSL2.
Kevin Foster, Chairman of the Broadband Forum, said the move represents a significant amount of work over many years including often challenging global industry consensus building.
“This will be the global standard for this innovative access architecture, and one on which many service providers will build their ultra-fast aspirations,” Foster said. “Technical Report 301 will enable the global economies of scale necessary for successful deployment of ultrafast broadband.”
In a statement, the Forum said that through the use of G.fast and VDSL2 over short copper loops it has become possible to provide broadband users with data rates approaching those of fiber alone.
The forum said TR-301 provides the architectural basis and technical requirements with a new node type, the DPU, defined. A key aspect of the new node type is the ability for it to be reverse power fed from the customer premises via one or more copper pairs.
The Forum said that the new specification will allow service provider to avoid the need to install new infrastructure into and around the home, while also allowing them greater capability for customer self-install, which removes the need for a visit to the customer premises and also the reduction of time needed to fulfill service requests.