Comms Alliance updates VDSL2 standards for NBN

Communications Alliance has released updates to industry standards that are crucial to the delivery of high-speed vectored VDSL2 broadband services to consumers via the National Broadband Network (NBN).

The two draft standards - released for public comment - will help equipment suppliers and retail service providers ensure broadband modems on copper lines are able to support high data rates and are also designed to filter out interference to existing services.

One standard adds technical requirements for vectored VDSL2 into modems. The other extends DSL filters to cover the VDSL2 frequency band. Trials of vectored VDSL2 earlier this year have delivered downstream rates of 100 Mbps for many users. As the NBN moves from trials of VDSL2 and into large-scale rollout of the technology, these standards, once finalised, will be an important piece of the multitechnology mix used to deliver telephony and broadband services over the NBN.

Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton said the draft standards are the essential underlying technical framework for end-user premises, needed to ensure that vectored VDSL2 can deliver its promised benefits as part of the new NBN technology mix - and do so without degrading the service quality for those customers still using ‘legacy’ services.

“Vectored VDSL2 has been shown in Australia and elsewhere to be a valuable technology that can deliver near-fibre data rates using, in part, the copper ‘last mile’.”

“But unless the technical parameters are set correctly, the speed increase available through vectoring will be largely lost, and VDSL2 can also seriously erode the quality of the legacy services located in its vicinity,” Stanton said.

“This last point is particularly important as the NBN rolls out across the country. In each area migrating to the NBN there will be an 18-month period during which new and legacy services need to co-exist without undue interference to one another, until eventually all fixed terrestrial services end up being migrated to the NBN.

“These draft Communications Alliance Standards are designed to thread a path through that technological maze, to the benefit of consumers, the NBN project and the service providers that offer services on the NBN.”

In a positive demonstration of industry and stakeholders working together to deliver high-speed broadband to all Australians, there are 17 organisations represented on the working committee that developed the draft standards. They include NBN Co, telecommunications carriers, carriage service providers, equipment suppliers and regulators.

In line with legislated requirements for standards, the public comment period will run until 25 November 2014.

The draft standards are available here.