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G.fast Enters Middle East Oman-based service provider Omantel will leverage its plentiful copper resources and upgrade customers' broadband offerings by deploying G.fast. The implementation, described by participants as the first G.fast network in the Middle East, is slated to cover 90% of home subscribers by 2020 in Muscat, Oman's capital. High-density buildings will gain access to speeds of 200 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s, the operator said in a release. "G.fast technology brings copper access into the gigabit era by delivering fiber-like speeds, which makes it possible for us to improve the experiences for more customers faster over old copper lines and thus making the most of our existing copper network," noted Said bin Abdullah Al Ajmi, vice president of operations at Oman Telecommunications Co. (Omantel) , in a statement. Speed is needed in Oman; last year, the nation's average Internet speed was 3.1 Mbit/s compared with the global average of 5.6 Mbit/s. Oman's neighbors out-performed the Middle Eastern country: United Arab Emirates reached 6.9 Mbit/s, Saudi Arabia averaged 3.4 Mbit/s and Kuwait reached 4.6 Mbit/s, according to United Nations Public Administration Network.
Building on Copper
Omantel will use Huawei's G.fast technologies to bring speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s to cities like Muscat.
In addition, because G.fast uses existing copper infrastructure, Omantel can deploy the new technology in multi-dwelling units' (MDU) basements, eliminating the need to drill holes or other time-consuming, costly and customer-unfriendly construction tasks. And because large-capacity G.fast supports up to 96 lines, the per-subscriber costs are amortized over a larger base, thereby reducing per-subscriber costs, the service provider noted. Using G.fast home gateways, subscribers will receive enhanced voice, data, video and dual-band gigabit WiFi services, Omantel said. Related posts:
— Alison Diana, Editor, UBB2020. Follow us on Twitter @UBB2020 or @alisoncdiana. |
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