Openreach are currently rolling out their new FTTC offering called G.Fast which is being classed as “Ultra-fast” broadband.
The roll-out of FTTC broadband (Fibre to the Cabinet) has slowly reached many areas now and most businesses have been benefiting from the much higher download and upload speeds available.
This has enabled businesses to work more efficiently and has opened up many avenues such as proper remote working, VOIP, video conferencing and other higher bandwidth activities.
Up until recently, the maximum speed of a FTTC line has been 80mb downstream and 20mb upstream (actually the useable maximum is around 72mb down and 17mb up) – the speed which you receive depends on the distance you are from your local green fibre cabinet – the speeds start to reduce when you are approximately 400 metres away.
FTTC works by utilising different frequencies on the piece of cable to delivery your internet connection. Currently the “up-to” 80mb FTTC service uses up to 17.664 Mhz frequency.
Openreach are currently rolling out their new FTTC offering called G.Fast which is being classed as “UltraFast” broadband speeds and can reach “up-to” 330mb down and 30mb up. This is made possible by harnessing higher frequencies on the current copper cable infrastructure.
Both of the 80mb and 330mb services keep their spectrum separate in order to avoid interference with each other.
To deploy this Openreach are installing “pods” which connect to existing green street cabinets.
It is hoped that by 2020 ultrafast speeds of more than 100mb will be available to more than 12 million properties.
