G.fast, which began certification testing in 2014 spearheaded by the University of New Hampshire InterOperablity Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is being hyped as the latest and greatest way to speed up DSL, though it would be restricted to shorter loop lengths of between 300 and 820 feet, something that, alongside ISP resistance to spend money on upgrades, has historically limited the usefulness of vectoring and crosstalk-reduction DSL advancements of this type.
AT&T now says it's exploring use of the technology to deliver 300 Mbps to apartment building residents without the need for additional fiber runs throughout a building.
Bill Smith, president of technology operations for AT&T, says the company has started poking at G.Fast in the lab as an upgrade solution, but the company has yet to conduct any lab tests of the tech in the wild. Such an upgrade would provide AT&T with another tool as the company tries to keep pace with the much-faster broadband speeds being deployed by cable providers, courtesy of DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades.
"We haven't made the call yet on G.fast," Smith told Light Reading last week. "Hopefully it turns out to be part of our arsenal."
G.fast uses time-division duplexing (TDD) as opposed to ADSL2 and VDSL2, which use frequency division duplexing. In early trials overseas, British Telecom said that at distribution points within 100 meters (238 feet) of end users, G.fast can deliver broadband speeds of 300 Mbit/s at a distance of 350 meters (1,148 feet).
Source: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Eyes-GFast-to-Deliver-300-Mbps-to-Apartments-136634