G.fast technology, which in theory allows telcos to push gigabit speeds over existing copper wire, isn’t a good substitute for fiber upgrades, according to Verizon’s director of network planning. Vincent O’Byrne, quoted in an article by Sean Buckley in FierceTelecom, said that even in multi-tenant office buildings or apartments, it’s more cost effective to install fiber all the way to the customer, than it is to bring fiber in or near a building and then use G.fast to close the gap…
“It’s a bit more expensive to put the single family unit fiber connections out there, but we have the same kind of service as the rest of the network,” O’Byrne said. “We also found that the trouble report rate is less on the fiber all the way to the living unit.”
“At Verizon we were finding the trouble reports on the copper were two to three times more than when we had fiber to the living unit,” O’Byrne said. “For a long time, the copper plant in the Verizon network was not as good as it was in some locations so if we went to G.fast it would be low volume and we would have the same issues five years down the road.”
Of course, if Verizon maintained its copper plant, instead of letting it rot on the poles and then selling it off, as it did in California, some of these issues might not have come up. But it’s true that copper circuits carrying G.fast traffic need to be relatively pristine in order to work over any real distance. If a lot of work is needed, there’s not much of a cost difference between refurbishing copper and replacing it with fiber.
Rapid and constant changes in technology are also a problem. O’Byrne said that as equipment hits end-of-life, it can’t always be replaced with compatible gear, and the mix of different generations of technology can be costly to maintain and difficult to support.