22 March 2017, Hannover, Germany – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, and NetCologne, a leading provider of fibre-optic direct connections in Germany, today announced the start of the G.fast pilot phase. Jointly developed by ZTE and NetCologne, the new G.fast technology enables transmission speeds of 1 gigabit per second. These speeds have already been tested in the lab, and now the first live connections have been successfully started in the pilot phase under real-world conditions.
State-of-the-art technology from China
Following intensive development work over recent months, a new type of digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), which fulfils the requirements of G.fast, will be implemented and installed as an interconnection point in building basements. As the DSLAM utilises a significantly larger frequency spectrum than the existing fibre to the building (FttB) DSLAM, it enables the transfer rate to increase in the future by a factor of 10 and up to 1GB. Despite the complex technology involved in G.fast, the new DSLAM is only the size of a briefcase.
Test phase in live operation
During the pilot phase, all speed profiles up to 1Gbit/s are tested via connections with different customer terminals. The frequency spectrum from 2.2MHz up is currently used for data transmission, leaving out the ADSL transmission range. The live tests with the first G.fast chip generation from ZTE currently utilise the frequency band up to 106MHz. As soon as the development of the latest chip generation has been completed, the frequency spectrum will be doubled again and increased to 212MHz.
Precondition for G.fast
G.fast technology will be available in the NetCologne network in the course of the year and is expected to serve around 260,000 households. The precondition is that the respective building has a direct fibre-optic connection from NetCologne. Further expansion of the G.fast network is envisaged for the future.
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