back to article Broadcom pitches chips at G.fast OEMs

Broadcom has become the latest vendor to stake out its ground in the G.fast market, as the ITU's standardisation bods stretch their hands slowly towards the rubber stamp. At the Broadband World trade show in Amsterdam, the chip outfit's been showing off silicon for G.fast and G.vector kit designers at both provider head-end …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's the point?

    G.FAST needs sub-20M to deliver the same speeds as GPON. You also need a powered Micro DSLAM at the distribution point. It is feasible only for overhead wires delivery, there is no way to do it in any of the more modern neighbourhoods where the wires are in the ground.

    If you have gone that far you might as well run a fiber to the house and get over it. You gotta love telcos - they will bend accounting rules to make Douglas Adams proud. Planning for 5+ years depreciation on FTTC (and probably on this) when they will have to write off the cost in 3 years time while at the same time refusing to do the business case for fiber with 5+ years depreciation.

    Granted - we all know the reason. Once fiber is in the ground it does not need 40k+ workforce to tend to it. It will just work. However, nobody up to board level wants a scrap with the union and has the guts to do that (in any country).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's the point?

      I think your hatred is blinding you and your analysis is a little off.

      Even neighbourhoods with underground distribution have boxes in the pavement where cables are jointed and ducts terminate. It doesn't seem beyond the capability of mankind to put line voltage powered mini-DSLAMs in them.

      Your union argument makes little sense - lots of telcos have made lots of people redundant. They also tend to have an age profile amongst their staff that means the problem becomes self-rectifying after time without any action being taken at all.

      The issue with not providing fibre everywhere is commercial and financial. Unless every premises takes fibre, you'll have the cost of maintaining a copper network and a fibre network. To date, only about one in six, one in seven properties takes any of the higher speed broadband offerings. The cost of a fibre install to a premises is at least three thousand euros, often more.

      It doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out that spending three thousand euros on providing a service that a customer will pay perhaps forty euros a month for doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It gets worse if you've spent that three thousand euros on providing fibre to a stereotypical little old lady who makes one phone call a week and doesn't want or need broadband.

      It would take an enormously foolhardy board of directors to go to their shareholders with a promise to borrow crippling amounts of debt to abandon a copper network worth billions and billions of euros and replace it with a fibre network that no-one can think of a way of making a return on. Fix that problem and we'll see more fibre to premises.

      1. russsh

        Re: What's the point?

        A 16% gross return p.a. doesn't sound too shabby to me. Especially if you're a government monopoly...

  2. Bunbury

    Unions?

    I would think that unions would be in favour of both technologies. G.Fast would nee lots of boxes installed and maintained, plus lots of migration tasks to move lines from other types of BB to the new box (so one task at the old exchange/cabinet, one at the G.Fast box. GPON requires massive amounts of manpower to get it out to every home and they all have to be trained on fibre working. Perhaps not quite so much in terms of maintenance jobs over the long term (though plenty of examples of delicate little cable vs reality makes for maintenance jobs).

    Unions are as prone to short term thinking as any other organisation - they might prefer the GPON.

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