Fibre to everywhere

For years, passive optical networks (PON) were all about fibre-to-the-premise, particularly fibre-to-the-home. Japan, South Korea, and China led the market with massive PON deployments.

"Now the focus is on fibre-to-everywhere, whether it's a home, a business, a school, a university, an enterprise, a traffic light," says Julie Kunstler, chief analyst, broadband access intelligence at Omdia.

Julie Kunstler

Adoption has also become global. India is one example, a market where the mobile phone has been the predominant broadband source. Now, several million consumers have fibre-based broadband due to a growing Indian middle class requiring the service for work. A similar story is unfolding in Africa.

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Access drives a need for 10G compact aggregation boxes

Infinera has unveiled a platform to aggregate multiple 10-gigabit traffic streams originating in the access network. 

The 1.6-terabit HDEA 1600G platform is designed to aggregate 80, 10-gigabit wavelengths. The use of ten-gigabit wavelengths in access continues to grow with the advent of 5G mobile backhaul and developments in cable and passive optical networking (PON).

A distributed access architecture being embraced by cable operators. Shown are the remote PHY device (RPD) or remote MAC-PHY device (RMD), functionality moved out of the secondary hub and closer to the end user. Also shown is how DWDM technology is moved closer to the edge of the network. Source: Infinera.

Infinera has adopted a novel mechanical design for its 1 rack unit (1RU) HDEA 1600G that uses the sides of the platform to fit 80 SFP+ optical modules. 

The platform also features an Ethernet switch chip that aggregates the traffic from the 10-gigabit streams to fill 100-gigabit wavelengths that are passed to other switching or transport platforms for transmission into the network.

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Sckipio improves G.fast’s speed, reach and density

Sckipio is using this week’s Broadband World Forum event in London to highlight its latest G.fast activities 

Sckipio has enhanced the performance of its G.fast chipset, demonstrating 1 gigabit data rates over 300 meter of telephone wire. The G.fast broadband standard has been specified for 100 meters only. The Israeli start-up has also demonstrated 2 gigabit performance by bonding two telephone wires.

Michael Weissman

“Understand that G.fast is still immature,” says Michael Weissman, co-founder and vice president of marketing at Sckipio. “We have improved the performance of G.fast by 40 percent this summer because we haven’t had time to do the optimisation until now.”

The company also announced a 32-port distribution point unit (DPU), the aggregation unit that is fed via fibre and delivers G.fast to residences. 

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China and the global PON market

China has become the world's biggest market for passive optical network (PON) technology even though deployments there have barely begun. That is because China, with approximately a quarter of a billion households, dwarfs all other markets. Yet according to market research firm Ovum, only 7% of Chinese homes were connected by year end 2011. 

"In 2012, BOSAs [board-based PON optical sub-assemblies] will represent the majority versus optical transceivers for PON ONTs and ONUs"

Julie Kunstler, Ovum

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