AT&T has been one of the earlier 5G home internet testers. 5G home internet brings the promise of gigabyte fiber speeds without the need to run fiber to every home.
AT&T for some time now has been testing 5G internet in towns like Austin, Texas, and now Dallas, Texas. AT&T has announced that they have now completed XGS-PON network testing that allows 10 Gbps and will be part of the backbone of AT&T’s 5G network.
Although for the average user this may not mean much, the end result is the dream of high-speed wireless internet is now a reality because AT&T has proved that not only does it work in the lab but it also works in the wild.
“In these field trials, the XGS-PON system tested multi-gigabit high-speed internet traffic and provided a seamless AT&T DIRECTV NOW video experience to trial participants. We used a virtualized Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) function to manage subscribers,” AT&T said in a press release. (http://about.att.com/story/xgspon_field_trials.html)
“Our network is constantly evolving. We’ll continue to execute our software-based network strategy to technologies like 5G, virtualized RAN, and G.FAST over time. Ultimately, instead of deploying islands of technology that have SDN control, we want to orchestrate the entire end-to-end network through ONAP,” said Eddy Barker, assistant vice president, Access Architecture and Design, AT&T.
With the completion of this testing, we are now one step closer to 5G becoming a reality. Both Verizon and AT&T have announced plans to bring 5G internet to the public starting later this year. Other companies such as Sprint, T-Mobile, Charter, Google, and Dish have also announced plans to launch 5G.
Here is a short demo we got of 5G in action at CES:
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