ADTRAN®, Inc.,, a leading provider of next-generation networking solutions, today announced they welcomed the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies, and its Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), for a meeting at its corporate headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama.
The group that met was “Study Group 15 Question 4”, which is the group that is developing important DSL standards such as G.fast and VDSL2. As the first meeting set after the consent of the G.fast draft standard last December, 20 industry leaders – including representatives from AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, CenturyLink and Orange – were tasked to advance the ITU-T G.9701 standard, commonly known as G.fast. After the week-long meeting of operators and vendors, it appears likely that the standard will be approved by year-end.
With the drive for widespread commercial deployments of Gigabit residential broadband services, as well as 100Mbps regulatory goals being set by the U.S. government and European Union, the vision for lightning fast broadband everywhere is becoming less of an industry dream and more of a reality. As more service providers look to offer ultra-broadband services surpassing 100Mbps and approaching Gigabit speeds, ADTRAN and other organizations, like ITU-T, are looking at the most economically feasible means to accelerate premium services to the broadest target market possible. The last segment of fiber right-of-way – trenched under a street or yard, pulled through home walls or up building ducts and risers – can be expensive and time consuming. The G.fast standard is directed at this Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) architecture challenge.
ADTRAN is leading the way for service providers to accelerate Gigabit services by leveraging G.fast in the last 300 meters. With emerging fiber deployment architectures known as Fiber-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdp) or Fiber-to-the-Building (FTTB), ADTRAN G.fast solutions allow service providers to use the existing local wiring for houses and apartments to deliver ultra broadband services that stack up nicely against alternative LTE-A, DOCSIS 3.1 and point-to-point FTTH deployment models. By eliminating the highest cost areas of deployment, service providers can not only deliver the very best experience for subscribers, but improve the profitability of their business. As one of the early developers of G.fast solutions, ADTRAN is giving service providers the opportunity to offer differentiated services today. Customers can take advantage of a variety of FTTH deployment options, including an innovative suite of FTTB Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) Optical Networking Units (ONU) to deliver ultra broadband services into these hard to reach areas.
“ADTRAN was honored to host the ITU-T Study Group 15 Question 4 standards meeting. In our work with service providers around the world, we see first-hand the benefit of this type of collaborative effort in shaping the standardization and adoption of new technologies,” said Dr. Kevin Schneider, chief technology officer, ADTRAN. “By helping standardize G.fast and proving out FTTdp deployment models, ADTRAN is helping service providers effectively expand their fiber service rollouts.”
In addition to its work with the ITU-T G.9701, ADTRAN is heavily involved with other industry groups defining FTTdp architecture and standards. These include ETSI TM6 in the area of reverse powering; ITU-T Study Group 15 Question 2 for work on standardization of the provisioning of PON-fed distribution point equipment; the Broadband Forum with their efforts in FTTdp architecture, management and interoperability standards; and the Celtic-Plus HFCC/G.fast project. ADTRAN also participates in FSAN, UK NICC, MEF and ATIS.