Notwithstanding the eagerness of several operators worldwide to deploy G.fast to accelerate the DSL services they offer, there is still technological business to address. One of those orders of business is assuring that products based on different G.fast chipsets can all work together.

To that end, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (IOL) is hosting a multivendor G.fast interoperability demonstration during this week's Broadband World Forum (BBWF) in London.

Participants include Calix Inc. (NYSE: CALX) and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , who are contributing testing demarcation point units (DPU), as well as Technicolor (Euronext Paris: TCH; NYSE: TCH), which is demonstrating customer premises equipment (CPE). The interop at BBWF will be the first public demonstration of the interoperability of these products.

The DPUs and CPE are based variously on chipsets from Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM), Metanoia Communications and Sckipio Technologies .

Those three were left to duke it out after Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) in August folded Ikanos, which Qualcomm had purchased a year prior in large part for Ikanos's G.fast expertise.

Digital Lightwave Inc. (owned by VeEX Inc. ) and Telebyte, meanwhile, are contributing test systems for the interop testbed.

Want to know more about the companies, people and organizations driving developments in the test, monitoring and assurance sector? Check out Testapedia, the most comprehensive online resource covering the telecom test and measurement industry.

Digital Lightwave is providing a multiprotocol analyzer (MPA), which generates and analyzes the Ethernet/IP traffic through the G.fast link. In addition, it supports single and multiple device testing with the ID-337 frame size distribution, VLAN tags, and counters to run the automated ID-337 test plan to verify data rate performance. (ID-337 is the Broadband Forum's designation for its G.fast test framework.)

"An Ethernet/IP traffic generator and analyzer is a critical component of the Broadband Forum’s ID-337 Certification Test Plan," said Cyrille Morelle, president and CEO of VeEX.

Telebyte is providing a G.fast noise generator, noise injector, digital analyzer, test jig and cable farm automation switch.

Michael Breneisen, president of Telebyte, says, "If the service providers know they will have the equipment they need to test -- and see proof the technology is maturing -- they are much more likely to take the next steps."

Kevin Foster, general manager of CPE and access for BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA), a notable advocate of G.fast, contributed the following statement: "Communication Providers need attractive in-home and standards-based solutions that their end customers can self-install." (See G.fast in the Spotlight)

In tandem with the demonstration, UNH-IOL will be showing some live testing during the demo, based upon the forthcoming G.fast certification program.

— Brian Santo, Senior Editor, Components, T&M, Light Reading

CALLING ALL TEST, ASSURANCE AND MONITORING COMPANIES:
Make sure your company and services are listed free of charge at Testapedia, the comprehensive set of searchable databases covering the companies, products, industry organizations and people that are directly involved in defining and shaping the telecom test and measurement industry.