KT Giga to 9M Korea homes, Spain, Turkey
- Details
- Published: 13 October 2016 13 October 2016
Moving from G.hn to G.hn Wave 2 at "up to 1 gig." G.hn has grown beyond home powerline into a legitimate contender for in-building broadband. KT, using Marvell chips has been offering hundreds of megabits since late 2014. KT reaches several million apartments now and intends to cover 95% of Koreans who can't get fiberhome by the end of 2017. That puts G.hn a year or more ahead of G.fast.
KT, working with Ubiquoss and Lightworks, has begun exporting the system. They have a deal with Turk Telecom and a demonstration building in Barcelona near Mobile World Congress. As you can see from their pr below, they plan a strong export campaign; the picture is the cover of their slick brochure.
G.hn is not as complex as G.fast with vectoring and many other features. That means it's simpler and cheaper. Chano Gomez of Marvell believes Wave 2 can match today's G.fast chips. I haven't seen test data from an independent source.
40% last two years, 30% expected next two years. NBN Chief Bill Morrow sees the Netflix surge passing and future growth slowing. The average NBN user draws 131 gigabytes/month, reports Geoff Long at CommsDay. (Not linkable. 
Shared networks can work remarkably well. Across the U.S., AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are in a fierce marketing battle to offer fiber to new developments. Table stakes now are a reliable gigabit network and premium TV offerings. 400,000 new apartments go up every year. They add less than 1/2 of 1% to the housing stock but are a prime growth market. 
If cable/DSL is good, people won't switch. 
Verizon planning business customers in 2017. Vincent O’Byrne doesn't believe 10 gig down, 2.5 up is enough for Verizon's future. He has begun trials of 40 gig down, 10 gig up NG-PON2 with Calix and Adtran, with the intent to start purchasing within a year. Boston's new fiber network would be a natural place for them; Verizon would be able to offer 10 gig inexpensively to the giant companies in Boston's financial district. The same gear will probably be natural for Verizon's 2018 test of 5G highband, which will need massive backhaul. mmWaves do not go far and will need cells every few hundred meters.