China’s tech giant Huawei will cooperate with a Panamanian company to provide the first copper-based broadband service in Latin America using G.fast digital technology.

Huawei signed on Jan 6 a cooperation agreement with Cable & Wireless Panama, a business unit of communications and entertainment services provider Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC).

A test period will last for two months before a faster service is provided using Huawei’s multi-service access nodes, according to a joint press release.

“G.fast technology is the right way of extending current infrastructure into the era of faster gigabit access,” said Stephen Ma, Huawei’s executive director in the Caribbean.

G.fast is digital subscriber line (DSL) technology for local circuits with speeds of between 150 Mbps and 1 Gbps.

Carlo Alloni, CWC’s executive vice-president of technology, echoed Ma’s remarks, saying G.fast technology “can bring the highest speeds in the region to its clients” thanks to the new broadband service.

With its first prototype launched in 2011, G.fast shows less dependency on traditional fibre broadband services and can provide greater bandwidth by using more radio spectrum over the copper line.