After successfully completing a trial in 2015, Nokia’s G.fast copper telecommunication solution is poised to launch in Japan. On Friday, Nokia announced that they will begin to deploy G.fast technology in the country commercially for the first time.
As well as reaching speeds close to the coveted 1Gbps, Nokia says that G.fast will enable easier installation for ultra-broadband in physical locations that might be harder to reach with fiber, such as apartment buildings or other multi-dwelling units. The service will be available through Energia Communication (EneCom) in the Chugoku area starting in June 2016.
G.fast was developed in Nokia’s Bell Labs, and uses built-in vectoring in order to reduce cross-talk interference. This catapults it beyond the speeds enabled by copper networks, but EneCom is also leveraging existing copper infrastructure, using the copper at the last few hundred meters of existing lines to deliver their broadband access. This cuts down on both the time and money usually required for a fiber-to-the-home deployment.
“As a global leader in fixed access, Nokia is committed to helping operators like Energia Communications accelerate the ultra-broadband deployments,” said Naoki Okura, head of Global Enterprise & Public Sector for Nokia in Japan. “G.fast is quickly proving to be a great way to do this in areas that are too complex or expensive to fully deploy FTTH solutions. With solutions like Nokia’s G.fast residential gateways and distribution point units (DPUs), we are able to help Energia Communications quickly and easily deliver on the promise of fiber network speeds and meet the growing demands of broadband in Japan’s highly competitive market.”
There are more than 34 G.fast trials going on worldwide in Nokia’s network, located in Japan and Europe. G.fast service in Europe is also provided by BT, which recently tested speeds of 150 – 200 mbps in their Ipswich, England laboratory.
According to Oliver Johnson, CEO of fixed broadband analyst firm Point Topic, gigabit-labeled services are expected to grow to at least 100 million subscribers by 2020.
