Openreach to trial G.fast in Swansea

100 lucky premises to test standard BT says might hit 500Mbps

Businesses and researchers around Swansea are going to get the chance to fool around with what will probably be copper's last hurrah, the VDSL-successor G.fast.

BT has told an innovation summit in the Welsh city that it's been added to the list of trial sites, in addition to previously-announced field trials in Huntingdon and Gosforth.

To date, G.fast has yet to escape BT's labs at Adastral Park in Suffolk.

Like its other planned field trials, the Swansea tests will be conducted by Openreach, making the services available to the carrier's wholesale customers.

BT hopes that the G.fast technology will “deliver speeds of up to 500 Mbps within a decade to most of the UK”.

That, the company notes, is subject to successful trials and to a “supportive environment for investment”.

The focus of this trial will be using G.fast in multi-dwelling units and business premises, with 100 premises to be selected to participate. There will also be a G.fast test lab in Swansea's BT Tower, to give boffins, boosters and retailers somewhere to test technologies and applications on the high-speed connections.

Alcatel-Lucent is supplying the equipment for the trials.

It's the sort of announcement we can expect to see more of, now that the high-speed ITU standard has been signed off and silicon is being baked.

Back in February, the the Broadband Forum held its first G.fast plugfest, with Broadcom, Sckipio, Realtek, HiSilicon, Okanos, Lantiq and Metanoia demonstrating interoperable chipsets. ®