CES 2015

G.fast Promises Gigabit Internet Over Phone Lines

Barb Gonzalez  |  Jan 9, 2015

Later this year you may truly be able to say goodbye to your cable company including dropping broadband cable. A new technology will make it possible for telephone companies to boost their speeds to over a Gbps (gigabit per second). That is 100 times faster than the 10 Mbps (megabits per second) average speed most homes have today and the same speed as Google fiber. At these speeds, users could stream four uncompressed 4K streams at the same time.

Developed by Israeli semiconductor chip company, Sckipio, G.fast technology runs over existing telephone copper wires and does not require fiber-optic cable all the way to your home. Instead, it is a way of boosting a signal to give more speed and more bandwidth to each customer. The best benefit of G.fast is that you don’t share bandwidth with your neighbors so your Internet speeds won’t decrease during busy times.

Sckipio will make the chips to go into access points and modems. I spent some time with the creators of G.fast learning the details of how it works. Leave a comment if you want me to explain more about it in a future blog.

COMMENTS
compunut's picture
Submitted by compunut on January 9, 2015 - 6:24am

Is it really full duplex 1 Gbps like Google Fiber? It amazes me how companies tout these things and fail to mention little things like upload speeds of 1Mbps max. The main reason I won't even consider DSL is the upload speed, not the download speed. The latency is another issue with DSL that keeps me away and that also isn't mentioned here.

pamplona62's picture
Submitted by pamplona62 on January 9, 2015 - 9:12am

Barb, yes provide more info in a future write up as this could be a game changer. Any projections on rollout timing?

MatthewWeflen's picture
Submitted by MatthewWeflen on January 9, 2015 - 11:47am

Yes, please do! The prospect of delivering a final eff-you to Comcast is enticing beyond words.

dnoonie's picture
Submitted by dnoonie on January 9, 2015 - 7:28pm

Cool!

What carriers will get/use it?
What is the loop length limit?
Noise rejection ability?

Thanks! Cheers!

hk2000's picture
Submitted by hk2000 on January 10, 2015 - 5:34am

I wouldn't trust anything coming from an Israeli company any more than I would a Russian or Chinese one- It must have some built-in spying mechanism.

Rich67's picture
Submitted by Rich67 on January 10, 2015 - 9:03am

Do you think, if this becomes a phone company thing, they will adopt a comcast like pricing model. How much cost is this likely to add to the phone companies 2-wire system. Keep us posted as things are made known. Maybe there is a chance that real competition will drive the cost down, at least, to the levels people pay in other countries,

WildGuy's picture
Submitted by WildGuy on January 10, 2015 - 11:33pm

i think dsl can go higher than 10 mbps, say like my at&t isp supports up to 24 mbps download but cost a lot more though than 6 mbps that i am using.

you are incorrect when you say "at 1 Gbps, users can stream up to 4 uncompressed 4K at the same time."

an uncompressed 4K or 2160p eat up 3 Gbps if it's 3840 x 2160p x 30fps x "4:2:0" Y:Cb:Cr sampling at 8 bits per channel. if it's 60 fps, that would double it to 6 Gbps. If uses higher color sampling like 4:2:2 Y:Cb:Cr instead of 4:2:0 sampling, that eat up even more bitrate in uncompressed data. Not only that but higher color bit depth per channel say 10 bits per channel instead of 8 bits eat up even more bandwidth in uncompressed mode.

its possible to stream one uncompressed "2K" or 1080p video at 1 Gbps if that 1080p video has a frame rate of 30fps or 60i at 4:2:2 Y:Cb:Cr color sampling each at 8 bits per channel. Because at that rate, it only eat up roughly 1 Gbps uncompressed.

or use a lower color sampling of 4:2:0 Y:Cb:Cr which only eat up to roughly 750 mbps.

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