BT’s research wing has unveiled a new technology dubbed G. Fast which boosts the speed of the conventional copper broadband connections to almost 1Gbps mixing upload and download.
BT’s Adastral Park research lab located in Ipswich has tested the technology and the results have proved that it could help offer ultra high speeds without increasing the cost. During the test, it was found that the technology delivered download and upload speeds of 786Mbps and 231Mbps respectively over a 19m copper wire connection.
When tested on a longer 66m connection, the download speed was 696Mbps and the corresponding upload speed was 200Mbps with promise of better speeds when deployed. Notably, 66 meters is the average length of a copper wire connection between a premise and the BT network.
While previous assumptions said that only all-fibre connections running up to the premises can offer such high speeds, the latest technology has proved that the older copper wire connections some of which were laid as early as 1950 could also offer such high speeds without having to be replaced with a new connection.
The set up will be complemented by a specialized transmission technology that will cancel the cross-communication between the copper lines to maintain consistency.
The technology is yet to be approved by the International Telecommunication Union and is expected to be commercially available by late 2015. BT has announced its research results just in time as Virgin Media has released its report on a new digging method it has discovered that could boost speeds.
