BT and Huawei are partnering on what they’re calling the “first large-scale customer trial” of G.fast in the United Kingdom.
The trial—taking place in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire—will use BT’s existing FTTC infrastructure and hopefully boost broadband speeds in homes by placing Huawei’s multi-port G.fast equipment in a nearby manhole.
In addition to the waterproof equipment necessary for setting up shop in the sewer, Huawei is also providing a headend optical line terminal (OLT), G.fast terminal, and a network management system.
Huawei’s remote power solution is also playing a role in this trial as well as a commercial deployment of fiber to the remote node (FTTRN), in the hopes of delivering faster broadband speeds without the need for a FTTH deployment.
The G.fast standard, first published in late 2014, claims to be able to reinforce a DSL connection so it can potentially support speeds of up to 1 Gbps and handle bandwidth-intensive applications including 4K video streaming.