One of the most common issue when it comes to delivering high speed fixed broadband especially in a high rise building in Malaysia is the ageing copper infrastructure. Even though the base of the building might be connected to the nearest node through fibre, the Internet speed that users within the building able to experience would be limited by the technology that the copper wiring able to support.
The technology involved would usually be VDSL or VDSL2 which theoretically able to deliver up to 300Mbps although from we’ve seen over the years, the most common speed for VDSL implementations in Malaysia is around 30Mbps. At this moment though, YTL Communications which are the folks behind Yes 4G is now testing a different technology which has the ability to deliver fibre-like speed over existing copper infrastructure.
Called GiGA Wire, the technology was developed based on ITU-T G.hn standard and is said to be able to deliver a speed of up to 1Gbps. What interesting about the technology is that it can work without any modification to the existing copper wiring within a building.
According to Wing K. Lee, the CEO of YTL Communications, the company has been testing the technology at several buildings in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. In one of the test building in KL, the company’s GiGA Wire implementation has managed to reach more than 800Mbps as shown in the slide above.
The implementation in Penang on another hand is slightly more unique though as it worked together with the company’s Terragraph network which is also currently going through testing in collaboration with Facebook. At this moment, Wing didn’t provide additional details regarding the commercial rollout for GiGA Wire but has stated that the company will be talking more about it very soon.
