10 Gigabit GPON gets broadband access support

Briefing: Next-Generation PON

Part 1: XG-PON1 goes commercial

Alcatel-Lucent is making available what it claims is the first broadband access platforms that support XG-PON1, the 10 Gigabit GPON standard.  The company has developed an XG-PON1 line card for use in its latest ISAM-FX as well as its existing ISAM-FD access platforms. The ISAM platforms support copper and fibre-based broadband access.

“First [XG-PON1] deployments will likely be in Asia Pacific but we are seeing strong interest from other regions"

Stefaan Vanhastel, Alcatel-Lucent

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Next-generation access will redefine the telcos

Benoît  Felten has left Yankee Group to set up a market research and consultancy company addressing next-generation access.

Gazettabyte caught up with him to understand the goals of his new company, Diffraction Analysis, and why he believes next-generation access is critical for service providers.

"As soon as you, the operator, make that investment decision, it has fundamental implications as to who you are as a company"

Benoît Felten, CEO, Diffraction Analysis

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Bringing WDM-PON to market

Significant power, size and cost challenges must be overcome before WDM-PON will be widely deployed.

 "We see just one way to bring down the cost, form-factor and energy consumption of the OLT’s multiple transceivers: high integration of transceiver arrays"

Klaus Grobe, ADVA Optical Networking

Considerable engineering effort will be needed to make next-generation optical access schemes using multiple wavelengths competitive with existing passive optical networks (PONs).

Such a multi-wavelength access scheme, known as a wavelength division multiplexing-passive optical network (WDM-PON), will need to embrace new architectures based on laser arrays and reflective optics, and use advanced photonic integration to meet the required size, power consumption and cost targets.

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Reflecting light to save power

CIP Technologies is bringing its reflective component expertise to an EU-funded project to reduce the power consumption of optical systems.  

System vendors will be held increasingly responsible for the power consumption of their telecom and datacom platforms. That’s because for each watt the equipment generates, up to six watts is required for cooling. It is a burden that will only get heavier given the relentless growth in network traffic.

"Enterprises are looking for huge capacity at low cost and are increasingly concerned about the overall impact on power consumption"

David Smith, CIP Technologies

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BroadLight’s GPON ICs: from packets to apps

What is being announced?

BroadLight has announced its Lilac family of customer premise equipment (CPE) chips that support the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) standard.

The company claims its GPON devices with be the first to be implemented using a 40nm CMOS process. The advanced CMOS process coupled with architectural enhancements will double processing performance while improving five-fold the packet-processing capability.  The devices also come with a hardware abstraction layer that will help system vendors tailor their equipment.

"Traffic models and service models are not stable, and there are a lot of differences from carrier to carrier"

Didi Ivancovsky, BroadLight

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DSL: Will phantom channels become real deployments?

Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs has announced it has achieved a data rate of 300 megabits-per-second (Mbps) over 400m using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. 

Alcatel-Lucent is promoting its DSL Phantom Mode technology as a complement to fibre-to-the-x (FTTx) technology. Operators can use the technology to continue to extend services offerings to existing DSL subscribers as they roll out FTTx over the next decade or more.

But one analyst believes the technology could take years to commercialise and questions whether the announcement is not sending a wrong message to the industry by providing an alternative to fibre.

“The investment required to upgrade DSL is quite small”

Stefaan Vanhastel, Alcatel-Lucent

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EPON becomes long reach

A controller chip that extends the reach and subscriber count of an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) is now available from Teknovus. The device, dubbed the TK3401, boosts EPON’s reach to 100km while the subscriber count is increased from 64 to a maximum of 256.

“Rural [PON deployment] is a tough proposition”

Barry Gray

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