The FCC’s decision on Net Neutrality does not directly impact the speeds that broadband services offer their subscribers but G.fast chipmaker Sckipio is betting that it’ll cause telcos to offer higher speeds to match the cablecos, according to Sckipio co-founder Michael Weissman. He said G.fast was the hidden winner in the FCC’s rulings.
First off the FCC had already said that any speed below 25 Mbps is not broadband by today’s standards. Telcos cannot even call their DSL service broadband any more. It means that over 90% of current DSL subscribers cannot be classified as broadband users.
The end result, Weissman said, is the pressure increases on telcos to deploy faster broadband technology and the best one that is the most affordable and future proof is G.fast. If the telcos don’t, he said, telcos will lose, perhaps forever, the wireline broadband wars to the cablecos. He says that Australia’s NBN venture has shown that all-fiber networks are too expensive to build. Verizon with its FiOS network might disagree — although it spent over $20 billion building FiOS in 70% of its footprint.
There is another worrying factor. US government statistics show that 75% of residences only have one service provider in their area that offers over 25 Mbps, mostly a cablecos. Weissman says public and government pressure will force telcos to up their speed, and the most affordable, future proof way of doing that is with G.fast equipment, preferably with Sckipio’s G.fast chips — but then a rising tide lifts all boats.
The FCC’s decision is good for Sckipio, Weissman says, because telcos will have to select between G.fast and FTTH and of course, although much slower, VDSL2 vectoring. It was originally marketed as an 80 to 100 Mbps solution but some like Deutsche Telekom have configurations that will allow it to go to 250 Mbps. Offsetting that is G.fast’s certainty that it is 500 Mbps now and likely 1 Gbps in the future.
There is some urgency here as more copper wire telcos are no longer classified as broadband providers in the US. Telcos have to upgrade now and FTTH takes too long and costs too much to deploy.
Finally they want to expand their available market. As one of the few affordable alternatives for telcos, deployment of G.fast is going to accelerate. It’s quicker to install than all-fiber networks, saves telcos up to $1,500 per subscriber and far exceeds the 25 Mbps minimum.
There are other applications that are creating demand: 4K, IoT and the coming onslaught of bandwidth hungry applications, ranging from tele-health to goodness knows what. Consumer will demand the fiber-like speeds that G.fast provides — or they will switch to the cableco’s broadband.
This first ran in Rider Research’s Online Reporter.