212 MHz Gfast is “Breaking through the Bottleneck”

If you’re a service provider that is about to launch high bandwidth broadband services, you know that it’s hard to predict the bandwidth demands that would be placed on you to support both current and future applications, especially without any speed degradation. This is particularly true for those service providers facing deployment challenges within multiple dwelling units (MDUs) having copper infrastructures.

Technologies like Gfast enable delivery of gigabit services by leveraging existing copper wiring. This means that by capitalizing on the high-speed broadband capabilities of Gfast, service providers can deploy fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services while delivering fiber-like gigabit performance without actually having to bring fiber to the premises or having to replace legacy copper infrastructure. The key here is the ability of Gfast to bring higher bit rates to MDUs, thus enabling service providers to vastly improve the broadband service experiences that they would be able to offer.

Gfast technology makes gigabit-level bit rates possible by adding spectrum to copper lines. The first set of Gfast chipsets were introduced in 2014, and since then, Gfast specifications on copper access technologies have been further developed with three amendments, the last of which, adds support for frequencies up to 212 MHz (Amendment 3).

Today, VDLS2 lines use spectrum up to 17 MHz while Gfast widens this spectrum to 106 MHz (Amendments 1 & 2). Lab testing has proven that using 212 MHz of spectrum almost doubles the capacity of Gfast, reaching close to 2 gigabits between upstream and downstream. Thus, by leveraging the latest Gfast chipsets supporting Amendment 3 functionality, service providers could capitalize on the opportunity to “break the bottleneck” and unleash the potential for delivering gigabit speeds to their subscribers.

In my March 22 video blog, I introduced the latest Gfast innovation from Calix---the revolutionary AXOS E3-48F Gfast Remote Node. This product provides 48 subscriber ports of 212 MHz Amendment 3 Gfast and can provide gigabit services using existing copper or coax wiring. Armed with unique capabilities such as cDTA, Gfast bonding, and mesh vectoring, service providers can deliver true gigabit services quickly, easily, and cost-effectively to any size MDU building.  

Go here to learn more about the disruptive innovations Calix has planned for the MDU market.