British fixed line incumbent BT has achieved download speeds of more than 5Gbps in early lab trials of a potential G.fast technology development, known as ‘XG.FAST’. In a press release the telco confirmed that it is conducting trials in partnership with French-US vendor Alcatel-Lucent, which are being carried out at both Adastral Park, the company’s global research and development campus in Suffolk, and at Alcatel-Lucent’s labs in Antwerp. While tests are still in the early stages, expectations have already been exceeded; aggregate speeds of 5.6Gbps were delivered over 35 metres of BT cable, a figure which the telco said represented a record for full-duplex data transmission over a standard single BT line at this distance. Meanwhile, the technology was also said to have performed well over longer distances, with aggregate speeds of 1.8Gbps over 100 metres.
Commenting on this latest possible technology advance, Mike Galvin, Managing Director of Next Generation Access for BT’s Technology Service & Operations division, was cited as saying: ‘These are exciting results. We know that G.fast will transform the UK’s broadband landscape but these results also give us confidence the technology has significant headroom should we need it in the future.’