You still need to bring fiber relatively close to the building, so it's not exactly happening without spending a cent.
Fun fact: Switzerland operates the only significant G.fast deployment in the world. The technology was such a flop that Huawei stopped making the hardware.
G.fast covers over a million premises in the UK. Extremely low take up partially as they started acceleration of FTTP build pretty much at the same time.
By the way most of the fibre needed to connect the FTTC/VDSL/GFast cabinets was already in the ground and they just needed to splice into it, as it was there for exchange to exchange backhaul, and leased lines. It's the final ~500 metres that's the expensive part of installing FTTP, as that has to be new and there is probably not a lead in duct that is clear so means climbing poles, clearing duct, or new trenching.
> Fun fact: Switzerland operates the only significant G.fast deployment in the world.
Nope. In Germany, M-net (Munich) and NetCologne operate massive g.fast networks, and if you don't want Huawei, go for Adtran's 516 lineup on the ISP side and AVM on the CPE side.
My friends in Munich or the Ruhr region don't seem to know of any "massive" G.fast availability... which in any way is very late to the party. But I stand corrected.
I didn't know about network equipment from other manufacturers, not sure why we're stuck with Huawei here, but it's a dead end. The plan is to migrate as many G.fast subscribers as possible to FTTH in the next 5 years, and eventually to mmWave 5G in a few corner cases.
When I still lived in Munich, I had M-Net since pretty much their inception. ADSL first, later fiber. It was always great, and on the very few occasions that I had problems, I usually directly got a technician on the line who knew exactly what they were doing, instead of a few layers of help desk peoples fielding calls.
Zyxel and Fast Networks are also good on the ISP side
(Not sure Fast Networks is still a thing - website seems to be down - but I run one of their DSLAMs and am happy with it)
I think that was an extremely small rollout. I didn't even know they ever deployed it until I checked when I read your comment. The upgrade path is full fibre, which you can now finally get in alot of places.
CenturyLink/Lumen has been using G.fast for most new FTTH deployments since 2016. They still install fiber to the outside of the house though, it's mostly about avoiding needing the installer to mess with wiring in the walls of existing houses, and being able to reverse power the outside node, instead of needing an outlet outside.
I'm pretty sure G.Fast was never actually deployed for NBN FTTC. It was planned/announced in 2021-2022, but eventually NBN came about their senses and decided to do FTTC -> FTTP upgrades like they're doing for FTTN.
Fun fact: Switzerland operates the only significant G.fast deployment in the world. The technology was such a flop that Huawei stopped making the hardware.