SFR beefs up its Box 8. The new Box 8X offer hides a major evolution in speed, reaching new fiber optic speed records.
This Tuesday, February 8, SFR is launching a new internet box, an evolution of the Box 8 marketed since 2019 and called Box 8X. The most significant development is not to be found on the side of the box itself, identical to the previous one, but on the side of its connectivity with the appearance of two additional Ethernet ports, for a total of four. A small change that hides a bigger, invisible one: the transition to an XGS-PON network architecture compatible with downlink speeds of up to 8 Gb/s.
Bandwidth only achievable in optical fiber, of course, which will be distributed between the various devices connected to the box (in Ethernet as in wifi 6), and can also be used via a 10 Gb/s SFP port, to which an Ethernet adapter is connected. As a result, SFR’s Box 8X joins Free’s Freebox Delta at the top of the fastest internet boxes on the market. “After being the first French operator to offer the very latest generation of wifi, wifi 6, SFR is innovating by bringing together this technology with a fiber speed of up to 8 Gb/s. SFR is thus extending its ambition to establish a new standard of the market which offers unequaled comfort of use”says Grégory Rabuel, CEO of SFR and Altice France.
1 Gb/s upload speed
Better, the XGS-PON theoretically gives the SFR box the possibility of providing 8 Gb/s of upload speed as well. No marketed offer will allow it, however, the operator having decided to “settle” for an offer with 1 Gb / s of upload (beating on this specific point the Freebox Delta and its 700 Mb / s). Note that there is nothing new on the TV decoder side, identical to that of the Box 8. People with a fiber socket connectable in XGS-PON can take advantage of the Box 8X at the price of €34 per month for one year ( then €50 monthly), via the SFR Fiber Power 8 offer.