XGS-PON
Nokia and Hong Kong Broadband Network Ltd deploy 25G PON
Nokia today announced that Hong Kong Broadband Network Ltd (HKBN), a leading telecom and technology solutions provider in Hong Kong, will deploy its 25G PON to provide customers with some of the fastest, most reliable broadband access speeds in the region. The 25G PON deployment will deliver 20Gb/s symmetrical broadband speeds essential for new applications and business services powering today’s digital economy.
Based on the Quillion chipset, Nokia’s 25G PON fiber broadband solution (more below) allows HKBN to reuse its existing fiber broadband equipment to immediately address demand for more capacity and enhanced broadband services.
William Yeung, HKBN Co-Owner, Executive Vice-chairman and Group CEO: “Since 2004, HKBN has been the market leader in introducing Hong Kong’s first fiber-to-the-home broadband service. With an unwavering commitment to innovation, we have joined forces with Nokia to achieve a groundbreaking upgrade, proudly providing customers with a revolutionary 25Gbps broadband speed that meets their ever-increasing demands for network connectivity. Looking ahead, we will continue to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, investing resources to expand network coverage and upgrade infrastructure. This will enable more households and businesses to benefit from our exceptional and high-quality services.”
Geert Heyninck, Vice President of Broadband Networks at Nokia: “Nokia’s technology enables HKBN to upgrade its existing fiber network quickly and efficiently, leveraging both passive and active assets. With Nokia’s technology and HKBN ‘s citywide network, we’re leading customers into a new era of seamless connectivity.”
Roland Montagne, Director and Principal Analyst for FTTH at IDATE: “The momentum behind 25G PON continues to build with the number of deployments growing substantially over the past year. Clearly the ability to quickly upgrade GPON and XGS-PON to deliver true 25Gbs without having to deploy additional network elements is attractive for large operators like HKBN that want to deliver 25G PON services to its customers.”
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Nokia recently deployed XGS-PON services with Baktelcom in Azerbaijan. That network can be upgraded in the future to 25G PON which would increase capacity and stay ahead of demand for higher bandwidth.
Nokia has also deployed with Global Fiber Peru a new subaquatic and future-proof Optical, IP and XGS-PON fiber broadband network in the Amazon rainforest, helping to reduce the digital divide. The extensive network connects over 400 communities to multi-gigabit broadband access that is critical in today’s digital economy.
About Nokia’s 25G PON Solution:
• Nokia’s 25G PON increases service agility with operational efficiency.
• The fiber access node supports multiple fiber technologies including GPON, XGS-PON, 25GS-PON and Point-to-Point Ethernet to deliver a wide range of services.
Resources and additional information:
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References:
https://x.com/nokia/status/1181473779320594433
Nokia’s launches symmetrical 25G PON modem
U.S. fiber rollouts now pass ~52% of homes and businesses but are still far behind HFC
Google Fiber planning 20 Gig symmetrical service via Nokia’s 25G-PON system
Dell’Oro: Broadband access equipment sales to increase in 2025 led by XGS-PON deployments
Dell’Oro Group expects broadband access equipment sales to decline by 1% in 2024 versus 2023, with the first half of 2024 seeing continued weakness followed by a surge in spending in the second half of the year. The first half of 2024 will continue to see some of the inventory corrections that marked a tough 2023 that saw a spending decline of 8% to 10%, according to Dell’Oro VP Jeff Heynen.
“Although the inventory corrections seen in 2023 will continue through the first half of 2024, the second half of the year is expected to be the turning point towards renewed growth,” said Jeff Heynen, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “Service providers still have the same goals of increasing their fiber footprint, increasing the bandwidth they can offer their customers, and improving the reliability of their broadband services through the distribution of intelligence closer to subscribers,” added Heynen.
Additional highlights from the Broadband Access & Home Networking 5-Year January 2024 Forecast Report:
- PON equipment revenue is expected to grow from $10.8 B in 2023 to $11.8 B in 2028, driven largely by XGS-PON deployments in North America, EMEA, and CALA and early 50 Gbps deployments in China.
- Revenue for Cable Distributed Access Equipment (Virtual CCAP, Remote PHY Devices, Remote MAC/PHY Devices, and Remote OLTs) is expected to reach $1.3 B by 2028, as operators continue their DOCSIS 4.0 and early fiber deployments.
- Revenue for Fixed Wireless CPE is expected to reach $2.5 B by 2028, led by shipments of 5G sub-6GHz and a growing number of 5G Millimeter Wave units.
- Revenue for Wi-Fi 7 residential routers and broadband CPE with WLAN will reach $9.3B by 2028, as the technology is rapidly adopted by consumers and service providers alike.
Source: Dell’Oro Group
About the Report:
The Dell’Oro Group Broadband Access & Home Networking 5-Year Forecast Report provides a complete overview of the Broadband Access market with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, and port/unit shipments for PON, Cable, Fixed Wireless, and DSL equipment. Covered equipment includes Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAP), Distributed Access Architectures (DAA), DSL Access Multiplexers (DSLAMs), PON Optical Line Terminals (OLTs), Customer Premises Equipment ([CPE] for Cable, DSL, PON, Fixed Wireless), along with Residential WLAN Equipment, including Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 Gateways and Routers. For more information about the report, please contact [email protected].
References:
Calix and Corning Weigh In: When Will Broadband Wireline Spending Increase?
Dell’Oro: Broadband network equipment spending to drop again in 2024 to ~$16.5 B
Dell’Oro: Broadband Equipment Spending to exceed $120B from 2022 to 2027
Dell’Oro: XGS, 25G, and Early 50G PON Rollouts to Fuel Broadband Spending
Alaska Communications uses XGS-PON, FWA, DSL in ~5K homes including Fairbanks and North Pole
AT&T to deploy FTTP network based on XGS-PON in Amarillo, TX
Telefonica España to activate XGS-PON network in 2022; DELTA Fiber to follow in Netherlands
Omdia: Cable network operators deploy PONs
In addition to the traditional hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) topology, several cable network operators (MSOs) are also deploying Passive Optical Network (PON) technologies for targeted fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) buildouts in rural areas and other greenfield environments. Others, like Altice USA and Virgin Media O2, are moving aggressively with PON overlays of their legacy HFC networks.
A recent Omdia (an Informa company) survey reveals that PON activity is rising among cable operators. Omdia found that about 35% of cable operators surveyed have already deployed PON in their networks, with another 47% expected to do so within the next year. Just 8% said they have no plans to deploy PON at this time. Collectively, about 80% of operators, as surveyed by Omdia, will be deploying PON in some form or fashion by next spring.
CableLabs recently launched a pair of fiber-oriented working groups focused on optical operations and maintenance and on specifying a DOCSIS framework for the provisioning of ITU-T based PON technology, including 10-Gig-capable XGS-PON. 10G-PON technology, first standardized in 2009 and first deployed in 2012, 10G-PON allows for 10 G symmetric capacity. The emerging 25G-PON and 50G-PON technology will allow cable operators to deploy cost-effective all-fiber solutions over the same optical distribution network far into the future to meet high-speed data trends.
While today’s PON deployments are largely focused on 10-Gig technologies, there’s already some action focused on next-gen 25-Gig technologies.
- Google Fiber (not a MSO) is starting to head in that direction with Nokia’s 25G PON technology (see pic below), as per this IEEE Techblog post.
- EPB (a municipal network operator in Chattanooga, Tennessee) has already introduced symmetrical 25 Gbit/s services across a footprint that passes about 180,000 homes and businesses. Katie Espeseth, VP of new products at EPB, notes that 25G PON lowers costs while also delivering the kind of bandwidth required by hospitals, universities and other local institutions. “It [25G PON] has opened a whole new world for us,” she said.
“The real issue here probably isn’t the speed,” but how operators manage these new networks and make the required upgrades to their back-office systems, Richard Loveland, director of product line management, PON for FTTP products, Vecima Networks told Light Reading. Cable operators, he said, will have to decide to focus on DOCSIS-style technologies or consider changing over to new systems and platforms. Loveland said merchant silicon is not available to support widespread PON deployment, and likewise isn’t convinced if the next big play will be for 25G or 50G PON.
References:
https://www.lightreading.com/fttx/cable-s-in-hot-pursuit-of-pon
https://www.lightreading.com/fttx/cablelabs-gets-laser-focused-on-fttp
https://www.cablelabs.com/technologies/pon
Google Fiber planning 20 Gig symmetrical service via Nokia’s 25G-PON system
Omdia Surveys: PON will be a key part of network operator energy reduction strategies
Ooredoo Qatar is first operator in the world to deploy 50G PON
Dell’Oro: XGS, 25G, and Early 50G PON Rollouts to Fuel Broadband Spending
AT&T to deploy FTTP network based on XGS-PON in Amarillo, TX
Telefonica España to activate XGS-PON network in 2022; DELTA Fiber to follow in Netherlands
ITU-T: 25 years of increasing fixed-broadband speeds over copper and fiber optic networks
by ITU News
The ITU Telecommunications standardization (ITU-T) working groups on broadband access over metallic conductors (Q4/15) and optical systems for fiber access networks (Q2/15), established in 1997 (25 years ago), laid the foundations for fixed broadband and have since then facilitated the meteoric rise in access speeds. Both groups are part of ITU-T Study Group 15, which looks at networks, technologies and infrastructures for transport, access and home.
DSL: ITU-T Q4/15 was formed to make DSL globally scalable:
“What followed was a 25-year journey of dedicated engineers fighting physics for ever-higher broadband speeds, through several generations of ITU-standardized DSL technology,” says Q4/15 Rapporteur Frank Van der Putten (a strong colleague of this author from 1996-2002 when both of us worked on ADSL and VDSL standards in T1E1.4 and the ADSL Forum).
Building on prior work by Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) committee T1E1.4 and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) working group TM6, the DSL technologies standardized by ITU now connect over 600 million homes and businesses to the Internet.
“DSL changed the world by enabling mass-market broadband,” Van der Putten says.
DSL enabled rapid broadband deployment at low cost because it used the existing telephone wires to the home.
“Championed at first by an impassioned few, continually provoking debates among Q4/15 experts, it has been an intellectual catalyst for the advancement of communications technology,” he adds. “We are proud to have played a part in that.”
While ADSL (asymmetric DSL), as defined by ITU in 1999, could deliver 8 megabits per second (Mbit/s), it was followed by ADSL2plus in 2003 at 24 Mbit/s and the very high speed VDSL2 at 70 Mbit/s. With the introduction of vectoring, VDSL2 reached 100 Mbit/s by 2010 and 300 Mbit/s by 2014.
In 2014, G.fast raised the bar to 1 Gbit/s, doubling this to 2 Gbit/s in 2016. Its successor standard, MGfast, achieves an aggregate bit rate up to 8 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) in Full Duplex mode and 4 Gbit/s in Time Division Duplexing mode.
The architecture standards for DSL, G.fast and MGfast were defined by the Broadband Forum (once known as the ASDL forum), which also plays a key part in promoting interoperability.
Van der Putten explains: “Both technologies intend to meet service providers’ need for a complement to the fibre-to-the-home technologies in scenarios where G.fast or MGfast prove the more cost-efficient strategy.”
The continual upgrading of ITU’s standards has also sparked huge upward revisions in forecasts for the life left in traditional telephone wiring.
Future directions for Q4/15 work include G.fast-based backhaul, MGfast at aggregate data rates of 10 Gbit/s, and ultra-low latency transmission optimized for 5G wireless back/mid-haul, he says.
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Cost-efficient fiber access – PON and FTTH:
ITU-T Q2/15 paved the way for passive optical network (PON) technologies as a highly cost-efficient means of enabling FTTH. Optical access networks now serve over a billion users worldwide, mostly based on PON. Q2/15 works closely with Full Service Access Network (FSAN), which collects system requirements from operators to determine common requirements for ITU standards.
“The result has been systems ideally suited for a large group of networks and applications,” says Q2/15 Rapporteur Frank Effenberger.
“The first widely deployed system, G-PON [Gigabit PON], is found almost everywhere now,” he adds.
Q2/15 has developed seven generations of PON systems. The first, pi-PON, operated at 50 Mbit/s. This was followed by A-PON (155 Mbit/s), B-PON (622 Mbit/s), G-PON (2.5 Gbit/s), XG(S)-PON (10 Gbit/s), and NG-PON2 (4 x 10 Gbit/s).
To provide the basis for interoperability, ITU standards specify the control system for PON systems. Q2/15 has also developed a range of implementer’s guides and works closely with FSAN, ATIS, and the Broadband Forum to foster common designs and interoperability.
From 10 to 50 Gbit/s PONs:
Demand for higher capacity keeps growing fast. Optical access solutions also support 5G wireless communications and innovation for smart cities and factories.
“What we are seeing is a gradual evolution from G-PON to XG-PON [a 10G, or 10 Gbit/s, network] and XGS-PON [a 10G symmetric network], which is now being deployed at scale in many countries,” says Effenberger.
The latest generation of ITU-standardized PON, known as “Higher Speed PON”, provides for speeds of 50 Gbit/s per wavelength, up from the 10 Gbit/s of its predecessors. Market demand for Higher Speed PON is expected to begin in 2024.
“Given the large size and cost of the fixed access network, upgrades generally come once per decade,” says Effenberger.
Higher Speed PON includes both single-channel 50 Gbit/s systems to succeed XG(S)-PON and multi-channel 50 Gbit/s systems to succeed today’s NG-PON2 – a 40G PON that operates at 10Gbit/s per wavelength.
Although Higher Speed PON offers a five-fold capacity increase over its predecessors, it has been designed to work with the same fibre plant as G-PON, XG(S)-PON and NG-PON2.
“A successful technology requires a coincidence of both technical feasibility and strong global market demand,” notes Effenberger. “We strongly believe that 50G PON will provide the right capacity, at the right price, and at the right time.”
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All-fiber future at Gbit/s speeds:
Q2/15 aims to continue delivering higher-capacity PON solutions, such as a multi-wavelength version of Higher Speed PON, and speeds even higher than 50 Gbit/s on a single wavelength. But passive networks cannot handle all foreseen demand.
“Certain applications will require more dedicated and higher-capacity solutions than PON,” says Effenberger, highlighting the motivations behind Q2/15’s development of various point-to-point bidirectional optics with speeds of 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, 25 Gbit/s, and 50 Gbit/s.
Q2/15 continues to study 100 Gbit/s transmission and point-to-point wavelength connections over a shared optical distribution network based on wavelength division multiplexing. “These are likely to find use in wireless fronthaul applications, given their exacting latency requirements,” says Effenberger.
References:
Orange España: commercial deployment of 10 Gbps fiber in 5 cities
Orange’s new 10Gbps fiber access will be at Love Total Plus and Love Total Plus 4 rates for residential customers, and at Love Empresa 3 and 5 rates for freelancers and small businesses. Adopting this speed will mean an increase of 10 euros /month on the price of the same.
In the 10Gbps offered by Digi, only 8Gbps was obtained, and it is expected that in the case of Orange it might be similar. It remains to be seen, what actual performance it offers.
References:
Orange launches 10Gbps symmetric fiber for individuals and companies, first in five major cities
Gartner: Worldwide 5G Network Infrastructure Revenues to Grow 39% in 2021
Worldwide 5G network infrastructure revenue is on pace to grow 39% to total $19.1 billion in 2021, up from $13.7 billion in 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.
Communications service providers (CSPs) in mature markets accelerated 5G development in 2020 and 2021 with 5G representing 39% of total wireless infrastructure revenue this year.
“The COVID-19 pandemic spiked demand for optimized and ultrafast broadband connectivity to support work-from-home and bandwidth-hungry applications, such as streaming video, online gaming and social media applications,” said Michael Porowski, senior principal research analyst at Gartner.
5G is the fastest growing segment in the wireless network infrastructure market (see Table 1). Of the segments that comprise wireless infrastructure in this forecast, the only significant opportunity for investment growth is in 5G. Investment in legacy wireless generations is rapidly deteriorating across all regions and spending on non-5G small cells is poised to decline as CSPs move to 5G small cells.
Table 1: Wireless Network Infrastructure Revenue Forecast, Worldwide (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
| Segment | 2020 Revenue | 2021 Revenue | 2022 Revenue |
| 5G | 13,768.0 | 19,128.9 | 23,254.6 |
| LTE and 4G | 17,127.8 | 14,569.1 | 12,114.0 |
| 3G and 2G | 3,159.6 | 1,948.2 | 1,095.2 |
| Small Cells Non-5G | 6,588.5 | 7,117.9 | 7,113.9 |
| Mobile Core | 5,714.6 | 6,056.2 | 6,273.3 |
| Total | 46,358.5 | 48,820.2 | 49,851.0 |
Source: Gartner (August 2021)
Regionally, CSPs in North America are set to grow 5G revenue from $2.9 billion in 2020 to $4.3 billion in 2021, due, in part, to increased adoption of dynamic spectrum sharing and millimeter wave base stations. In Western Europe, CSPs will prioritize on licensing spectrum, modernizing mobile core infrastructure and navigating regulatory processes with 5G revenue expected to increase from $794 million in 2020 to $1.6 billion in 2021.
Greater China is expected to maintain the No.1 global position in global 5G revenue reaching $9.1 billion in 2021, up from $7.4 billion in 2020. With China’s government funding 5G development for the three state owned carriers, that’s no surprise.
The big beneficiaries of China’s 5G infrastructure spending will be its domestic equipment makers, Huawei, ZTE, and (state owned) Datang Telecom. Despite clamoring for Sweden to permit Huawei 5G equipment to be deployed, Ericsson only received 3% of a joint 5G radio contracts from China Telecom, China Unicom and 2% from China Mobile, according to Reuters. Nokia, which was expected to take away Ericsson’s market share in China, did not receive any share, according to a tender document published by the Chinese companies.
In a way that’s a win for the Swedish vendor – and a brief share price hike backs up that statement – which won just 2% of an earlier deal from China Mobile. But if they want to secure their share of the multiple billions of dollars of global 5G infrastructure revenues forecast by Gartner, the likes of Ericsson and Nokia will need to keep winning contracts in their home markets.
5G Coverage in Tier-1 Cities Will Reach 60% in 2024:
While 10% of CSPs in 2020 provided commercialized 5G services, which could achieve multiregional availability, Gartner predicts that this number will increase to 60% by 2024, which is a similar rate of adoption for 4G- LTE in the past.
“Business and customer demand is an influencing factor in this growth. As consumers return to the office, they will continue to upgrade or switch to gigabit fiber to the home (FTTH) service as connectivity has become an essential remote work service,” said Porowski. “Users will also increasingly scrutinize CSPs for both office and remote work needs.”
This rapid shift in customer behavior is driving growth in the global passive optical network (PON) market as a preferred technology. The 10-Gigabit-capable symmetric-PON (XGS-PON) is not a new technology and with the price difference with other technologies narrowing, CSPs are willing to invest in XGS-PON to differentiate themselves in customer experience and network quality. Gartner estimates that by 2025, 60% of Tier-1 CSPs will adopt XGS-PON technology at large-scale to deliver ultrafast broadband services to residential and business users, up from less than 30% in 2020.
Gartner clients can learn more in the reports “Forecast Analysis: Communications Service Provider Operational Technology, Worldwide” and “Forecast: Communications Service Provider Operational Technology, Worldwide, 2019-2025, 2Q21 Update.”
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Small Cells?
While Gartner did not split out small cells’ contribution to the overall 5G infrastructure segment, evidence thus far suggests the market is progressing more slowly than many had once believed.
Last month, Crown Castle increased its guidance for the second time this year due to a strong cell towers market, but halved the number of small cells it expects to deploy in 2021 to 5,000. The company noted that wireless network operators have focused on tower-based 5G rollouts at the expense of small cells.
References:
5G network kit revenues to near $20 billion this year — report
Telefonica España to activate XGS-PON network in 2022; DELTA Fiber to follow in Netherlands
Telefonica España will begin the commercial deployment of a 10 Gbps fiber broadband network using XGS-PON technology in Spain in the first half of 2022, reports website bandaancha.eu.
The gradual rollout is part of Telefonica’s ‘Banda Ancha Abierta‘ (Open Broadband) project to install an efficient, open, scalable and virtualized network model that will facilitate fixed-mobile convergence (fixed access with mobile backhaul), Multi-access Edge Computing capabilities ( MEC), and the deployment of third-party applications.
Telefónica’s FTTH network in Spain passes 26.1 million homes as of June 2021, for which 4,726,700 clients are served through the Movistar and O2 brands. In addition, there are 2,801,700 clients of other operators served through indirect fiber optics.
The introduction of XGS-PON will introduce two new lambdas or wavelengths on the existing GPON fiber infrastructure. The same fiber cable will carry wavelengths corresponding to GPON and in parallel new colors of the laser for XGS-PON so that the two technologies do not interfere with each other.
XGS-PON raises the available throughput for an entire fiber branch to 10 Gbps downstream and 10 Gbps upstream for up to 64 client endpoints. That will permit Telefonica to commercialize speeds of up to 2.5 Gbps symmetric and, in the medium term, up to 10 Gbps.
XGS-PON requires new customer premises equipment. Telefónica customers have been waiting for years for the new XHGU router that the operator announced in 2018 and that is compatible with XG-PON, in addition to bringing high-penetration WiFi 6.
With the arrival of XGS-PON, Movistar will begin to distribute this new router or temporarily provide an ONT XGS-PON.
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In a related story, DELTA Fiber has attracted 2 billion euros to back a planned roll-out of XGS-PON technology throughout the Netherlands. The 10G PON deployment will expand DELTA Fiber’s network to 2 million fiber connections in 2025. It currently expects to reach 1 million connections by the end of this year.
The company expects to begin rolling out XGS-PON this September. It will use the technology exclusively in its future builds with an eye toward making gigabit broadband widely available.
DELTA Fiber also said it plans to deploy 25G PON in the future. Along these lines, the company recently announced a partnership with Proximus of Belgium to deploy fiber to the home networks in Flanders. Proximus has already adopted 25G PON technology.
References:
https://bandaancha.eu/articulos/movistar-actualizara-velocidad-red-fibra-9973
Broadband Forum and LAN Laboratory Expand Certification Program to include XGS-PON
As demand for fiber networks continues to grow, the Broadband Forum has expanded its BBF.247 Optical Network Unit (ONU) Certification Program to include XGS-PON.
This latest update extends the program to a variety of key features needed by operators deploying XGS-PON networks. The certification is just one piece of Broadband Forum’s vision to provide network operators with the tools, open specifications, and open source references necessary to bring new services and technologies to their customers more rapidly. Certified ONU products can be deployed quickly, with improved interoperability to existing Optical Line Terminal (OLT) equipment already deployed. Similarly, certified ONU products will also work directly with newer Broadband Forum specifications, including the forthcoming virtual OMCI specifications and software defined access networks.
The XGS-PON extensions add to the BBF.247 G-PON initiative – which has now certified nearly 100 products since its launch in 2011. The new test plan will see ONUs undergo rigorous testing at Broadband Forum’s official certification program test laboratory Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques (LAN Laboratory), using MT2’s ONU testing solution. The work will confirm conformance to the latest PON ITU-T standards, providing network operators with assurance that they can deliver efficient networks and a high-quality customer experience. New additions to the technology are also now tested, including extended OMCI messages format, Enhanced Unicast & Multicast Operations, and Capacity Tests & Performance Monitoring. This increases the number of certification test cases by more than 50% compared to the previous version.
Eight products, including single or multi-user port ONUs/L2 and Residential Gateways from Altice Labs, CommScope, Huawei, Humax, KAONMEDIA, Sagemcom, Sercomm and ZTE have already been certified under the new BBF.247 certification program.
“The introduction of XGS-PON certification by Broadband Forum is a significant and positive step for the PON ecosystem as interoperability will encourage growth,” said Jaeseok Kim, Head of Infra Planning at SK Broadband. “This will become increasingly important as more operators look to upgrade existing network to meet consumer demand for Gigabit + speeds.”
Claudio Mathys, Product Manager Wireline Access Networks at Swisscom (Schweiz) AG, added: “Establishing interoperability and testing requirements are key elements in a liberated market. The introduction of XGS-PON from Swisscom as a technology leader – in conjunction with the certification and testing program from Broadband Forum – will significantly enhance the confidence from our competitors for CPE certification as based on industry standards and independent references. Achieving Broadband Forum certification is the entry ticket for connectivity to our network. We will definitely avoid the painful experience made with xDSL interoperability/complexity – right from the beginning.”
Hugues Le Bras, Network Engineer in Fixed Access Networks at Orange, said: “The role of interoperability and standards has only become more important as broadband grows in popularity and operators upgrade their networks to meet consumer demand. Orange already requests BBF.247 certification for each ONU deployed on the field. However, this expansion of Broadband Forum’s certification program will give us confidence when deploying next-generation technology that will enable the future era of connectivity. The latest additions to the certification also bring new features, such as flexibility and monitoring, which are essential for Orange throughout the ONU life.”
A future XGS-PON interoperability test event will take place at LAN Laboratory, in Tauxigny, France, from October 5 to 9, 2020, allowing vendors worldwide to exercise their OLT or Optical Network Terminal (ONT) solutions against each other. The event will give all equipment vendors the opportunity to improve the interoperability of their products by testing them against the other solutions presented at the event.
“Our existing G-PON certification has made a significant impact on ensuring products meet standards, and this latest expansion of the program will give operators the confidence to roll out mass XGS-PON deployments,” said Robin Mersh, CEO at Broadband Forum. “We now want to instill this same assurance in the industry for upcoming ITU PON technology, including XGS-PON and NG-PON2. XGS-PON is a major step in network evolution, supporting the expansion of 5G and through BBF.247 certification, we can ensure network interoperability.”
Thierry Doligez, Director of LAN Laboratory, said: “Both operators and vendors increasingly recognize the importance of certification in order to speed up deployment and we are proud to partner with Broadband Forum on this extension of its G-PON certification program. As operators move to upgrade their networks to meet increasing consumer demand, the new testing will make sure they are investing in trusted products which will guarantee a certain level of service. ONU manufacturers will also benefit from this substantial program update as it will give them the chance to prove their conformance against enhanced features.”
For more information or to actively get involved with Broadband Forum’s work on higher speed PON technologies, visit: www.broadband-forum.org.
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BBF.247 certification program is open to all GPON, XG-PON and XGS-PON ONU products with Ethernet Interfaces and is based on the Broadband Forum’s TP-247/IR-247 test plan. It tests conformance to TR-156 and TR-280 using OMCI as defined in the ITU G.988, which are the most critical standards to interoperable implementations.
The Broadband Forum has reviewed and authorized the following independent testing agency to administer the approved BBF.247 tests and assess eligibility of products for the Broadband Forum Certification. For more information or to schedule testing, please contact the laboratory directly:
- LAN www.lanpark.eu
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- Since 2009, the BBF has collaborated with FSAN (Full Service Access Network) on interoperability testing plugfests on the physical, TC and upper layers for GPON, with FSAN leading on the first two and BBF on the last.
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About Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum is the communications industry’s leading organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development. Our members’ passion – delivering on the promise of broadband by enabling smarter and faster broadband networks and a thriving broadband ecosystem.
A non-profit industry organization composed of the industry’s leading broadband operators, vendors, and thought leaders, our work to date has been the foundation for broadband’s global proliferation and innovation. For example, the Forum’s flagship TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol has nearly 1 billion installations worldwide.
Broadband Forum working groups collaborate to define best practices for global networks, enable new revenue-generating service and content delivery, establish technology migration strategies, and engineer critical device, service & development management tools in the home and business IP networking infrastructure. We develop multi-service broadband packet networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market.
Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at https://www.broadband-forum.org/
About Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques (LAN Laboratory)
The Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques (LAN) is a unique independent laboratory specialized in conformance, interoperability and coexistence tests of devices deployed by telecom operators in the access and home networks (DSL, G-PON, Broadband-PLC, …), by DSOs in Smartgrids networks using powerline communications (G3-PLC), and by the industry in video security networks (E&PoC). LAN also offers on-demand test services dedicated to PON network operators, addressing their needs in terms of pre-deployment qualification tests for each specific network they operate. LAN is one of the Broadband Forum’s Approved Test Laboratory (ATL), the unique one accredited by the Broadband Forum to conduct the worldwide recognized BBF.247 certification tests for G-PON, XG-PON and XGS-PON terminals.
For more information on Laboratoire des Applications Numeriques, please go to www.lanpark.eu, follow @Laboratoire_LAN on Twitter, or send an Email to [email protected].
About MT2
MT2 leads the industry in FTTH G-PON and XGS-PON network test, offering troubleshoot, monitoring deep analysis of products, and ‘single-click’ automated test suite solutions. MT2’s analyzers and OLT emulators have the unique powerful features to allow the user to simply ‘software-select’, and switch between GPON, XG-PON, XGS-PON or NG-PON2, all within the same single system. MT2 ensures the complicated protocols and subscriber internet access traffic complies with every spec, automatically, using a powerful and intuitive user interface, high precision and innovative design. MT2 actively contributes to the Broadband Forum activity, as a test-tool vendor, and developed its FTTH automated test suites for functionality and performance testing, covering BBF.247, TR-309 and TR-255, critical to ensure system quality and full validation of any operator’s FFTH network.
For more information on MT2, please go to www.mt2.fr, follow MT2ftth on LinkedIn, or send an Email to [email protected]
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References:
AT&T deploys XGS-PON to power FTTH nets
AT&T has enhanced its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) “last mile” network by deploying XGS-PON [1.] technology which will be live in 40 markets. AT&T will start out providing 1 gigabit download speeds before eventually boosting them to 10 gigabits per second in both directions as it upgrades from GPON networks. The company said it has deployed XGS-PON in “a few thousand locations” noted that it has employed multiple vendors in the process. It’s part of AT&T’s road map to virtualize network access functions within its last mile network.
NOTE 1. XGS-PON is a fixed wavelength symmetrical 10 Gbps passive optical network technology.
The “X” in XGS represents the number 10, and the letter “S” stands for symmetrical, XGS-PON = 10 Gigabit Symmetrical PON. An earlier, non-symmetrical 10 Gigabit PON version (XG-PON) was limited to 2.5 Gbps in the upstream direction.
PON technology originated in the 1990’s and has continued to develop through multiple iterations with differing wavelengths, speeds and components emerging as the technology has improved. The common denominator of all fiber optic PON networks remains the unpowered or passive state of the fiber and its splitting or combining components, i.e. no active elements such as optical amplifiers, which would require power, are present in the network. With streaming, high definition, 5G and other emerging technologies continually pushing bandwidth demands, the development of XGS-PON and other standards has proven to be essential.
Simultaneous upstream and downstream transmission over the same fiber is made possible through wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). This technology allows one XGS-PON wavelength or color of light transmission for upstream and another for downstream.
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Two years ago, AT&T completed trials of 10 Gbps XGS-PON by using Open Source Access Manager Hardware Abstraction (OSAM-HA) software in Atlanta and Dallas. OSAM-HA was released into the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) in 2017 as VOLTHA.
- OSAM, which used the Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP) platform that AT&T helped develop, is a vendor-agnostic operational suite for managing consumer and business broadband access network elements and capabilities. ONAP has undergone several major releases over the past few years.
- ONF’s Virtual OLT Hardware Abstraction (VOLTHA) open source software project, which is a component of ONF’s SDN Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) platform, abstracts a PON network to make it manageable as if it were a standard OpenFlow switch.
- SEBA describes how to assemble a collection of open source components to build a virtualized PON network to deliver residential broadband and mobile backhaul. SEBA uses a disaggregated white-box approach for building next generation access networks by using open source.
“AT&T continues to work with open communities such as ONF, ONAP, and OCP (Open Compute Project) to drive innovation, time-to-market, and cost improvements as we build next generation networks,” the company said in a March 4th statement in regard to a request for more information on the deployments in the 40-plus cities.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Conventional wisdom in the fiber broadband industry suggests NG-PON2 is the platform most providers will eventually adopt, with XGS-PON as an interim step to get there.
Verizon seems to be leapfrogging that approach. For what it’s worth regarding conventional wisdom, the AT&T spokesperson tells Telecompetitor, that “AT&T is not currently planning to use NG-PON2 at this time.”
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References:
AT&T Fiber Begins Transition to Next Generation XGS-PON FTTH
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-tees-up-1-gig-xgs-pon-speeds-over-40-cities
https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/xgs-pon
http://www.tarluz.com/ftth/specification-differences-among-gpon-xg-pon-and-xgs-pon/
AT&T deploys XGS-PON to power FTTH nets
AT&T has enhanced its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) “last mile” network by deploying XGS-PON [1.] technology which will be live in 40 markets. AT&T will start out providing 1 gigabit download speeds before eventually boosting them to 10 gigabits per second in both directions as it upgrades from GPON networks. The company said it has deployed XGS-PON in “a few thousand locations” noted that it has employed multiple vendors in the process. It’s part of AT&T’s road map to virtualize network access functions within its last mile network.
NOTE 1. XGS-PON is a fixed wavelength symmetrical 10 Gbps passive optical network technology.
The “X” in XGS represents the number 10, and the letter “S” stands for symmetrical, XGS-PON = 10 Gigabit Symmetrical PON. An earlier, non-symmetrical 10 Gigabit PON version (XG-PON) was limited to 2.5 Gbps in the upstream direction.
PON technology originated in the 1990’s and has continued to develop through multiple iterations with differing wavelengths, speeds and components emerging as the technology has improved. The common denominator of all fiber optic PON networks remains the unpowered or passive state of the fiber and its splitting or combining components, i.e. no active elements such as optical amplifiers, which would require power, are present in the network. With streaming, high definition, 5G and other emerging technologies continually pushing bandwidth demands, the development of XGS-PON and other standards has proven to be essential.
Simultaneous upstream and downstream transmission over the same fiber is made possible through wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). This technology allows one XGS-PON wavelength or color of light transmission for upstream and another for downstream.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Two years ago, AT&T completed trials of 10 Gbps XGS-PON by using Open Source Access Manager Hardware Abstraction (OSAM-HA) software in Atlanta and Dallas. OSAM-HA was released into the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) in 2017 as VOLTHA.
- OSAM, which used the Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP) platform that AT&T helped develop, is a vendor-agnostic operational suite for managing consumer and business broadband access network elements and capabilities. ONAP has undergone several major releases over the past few years.
- ONF’s Virtual OLT Hardware Abstraction (VOLTHA) open source software project, which is a component of ONF’s SDN Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) platform, abstracts a PON network to make it manageable as if it were a standard OpenFlow switch.
- SEBA describes how to assemble a collection of open source components to build a virtualized PON network to deliver residential broadband and mobile backhaul. SEBA uses a disaggregated white-box approach for building next generation access networks by using open source.
“AT&T continues to work with open communities such as ONF, ONAP, and OCP (Open Compute Project) to drive innovation, time-to-market, and cost improvements as we build next generation networks,” the company said in a March 4th statement in regard to a request for more information on the deployments in the 40-plus cities.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Conventional wisdom in the fiber broadband industry suggests NG-PON2 is the platform most providers will eventually adopt, with XGS-PON as an interim step to get there.
Verizon seems to be leapfrogging that approach. For what it’s worth regarding conventional wisdom, the AT&T spokesperson tells Telecompetitor, that “AT&T is not currently planning to use NG-PON2 at this time.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
References:
AT&T Fiber Begins Transition to Next Generation XGS-PON FTTH
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-tees-up-1-gig-xgs-pon-speeds-over-40-cities
https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/xgs-pon
http://www.tarluz.com/ftth/specification-differences-among-gpon-xg-pon-and-xgs-pon/