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Calix installs G.fast services across Australian fibre-copper broadband

Calix has begun enabling ISPs to offer G.fast services well ahead of NBN, with the technology currently delivering symmetrical speeds of 300Mbps over hybrid copper-fibre networks.
Written by Corinne Reichert, Contributor

Small Australian internet service provider (ISP) Comvergence has begun deploying the nation's first G.fast services using the AXOS solution from broadband communications access systems and software provider Calix.

The G.fast service is being provided to businesses across Sydney and Melbourne, with Calix's AXOS E5-16F G.fast node and 801F GigaPoints being installed inside multi-tenant units.

The service is currently delivering symmetrical speeds of around 300Mbps, with the capacity to upgrade to gigabit speeds where required.

It also makes use of Calix's E7-2 Modular Access System for gigabit Ethernet backhaul over fibre, and Calix's AXOS Activate software for end-to-end service management and provisioning.

"Calix AXOS G.fast solutions gave us a powerful one-two punch in Australia's two largest cities: The ability to stand out as the company capable of deploying not only the fastest and most reliable business services over copper in the market, but to do so in the shortest time from order to service delivery," said Comvergence director Brian Michaels.

Michaels added that Comvergence is now looking to expand its G.fast services across the country -- and said the company is next aiming to use Calix copper bonding technology to double its broadband speeds, as well as Calix's collective dynamic timing allocation (cDTA) technology to reallocate and maximise downstream and upstream bandwidth.

"Historically, businesses residing in copper-fed MTUs were experiencing a digital divide -- left behind as their competitors made the leap to higher-speed services and performance," Calix vice president of international sales Joseph Haddad said.

Calix claimed that its solution provides enterprise and government end users with the fastest copper-fibre broadband speeds in Australia at "more than 12 times the speeds targeted by NBN".

While the Australian government's National Broadband Network (NBN) has trialled G.fast technology, attaining speeds of 522Mbps down/78Mbps up over a fibre-to-the-basement (FttB) 100m copper in partnership with Nokia back in 2015, ZDNet last year revealed that NBN will be launching its new fibre-to-the distribution point (FttDP) network with old VDSL technology instead of G.fast.

This is despite G.fast being ready now, and NBN's FttDP network not launching until 2018 -- and means that the approximate 500Mbps download speeds attainable over a G.fast FttDP connection will be downgraded to around the maximum 100Mbps download speeds currently seen over fibre to the node (FttN).

NBN also trialled G.fast's next iteration, XG-FAST, in August last year for speeds of 8Gbps.

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