First 50G-PON merchant silicon spurs operator trials

Broadcom has unveiled the industry’s first merchant silicon for the 50-gigabit passive optical network (50G-PON) access standard. Until now, only access equipment players such as Huawei and ZTE had their own 50G-PON silicon.  

A 50G-PON network. Source: Adtran.

Broadcom has announced two 50G-PON devices: an optical line terminal (OLT) chip and the optical networking unit (ONU) 50-PON port to the users.  Both chips include custom hardware from Broadcom to run artificial intelligence (AI) machine-learning algorithms. 

Jim Muth, senior manager of product marketing at Broadcom, says supporting AI benefits the operator and the quality of the end user’s broadband service. 

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An insider's view on the merits of optical integration

One of the pleasures of attending the OFC show, held in Los Angeles last month, is the many conversations possible in one location. The downside is that too many are cut short due to the show's hectic schedule. One exception was a conversation with Valery Tolstikhin (pictured), held in a quiet room prior to the exhibition hall's opening.

Tolstikhin is president and CEO of Intengent, the Ottawa-based consultancy and custom design service provider, and an industry veteran of photonic integration. In 2005 he founded OneChip Photonics, a fabless maker of indium phosphide photonic integrated circuits for optical access. 

One important lesson he learned at OneChip was how the cost benefit of a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) can be eroded with a cheap optical sub-assembly made from discrete off-the-shelf components. When OneChip started, the selling price for GPON optics was around $100 a unit but this quickly came down to $6. "We needed sales in volumes and they never came close to meeting $6," says Tolstikhin.

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Verizon prepares its next-gen PON request for proposal

Verizon will publish its next-generation passive optical network (PON) requirements for equipment makers in the coming month.

Vincent O'Byrne

The NG-PON2 request for proposal (RFP) is being issued after the US operator completed a field test that showed a 40 gigabit NG-PON2 system working alongside Verizon’s existing GPON customer traffic.  

The field test involved installing a NG-PON2 optical line terminal (OLT) at a Verizon central office and linking it to a FiOS customer’s home 5 km away. A nearby business location was also included in the trial.

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NeoPhotonics' PIC transceiver tackles PON business case

Gazettabyte completes its summary of optical announcements at ECOC, held in Amsterdam. In the third and final part, NeoPhotonics’ GPON multiport transceiver is detailed.

Part 3: NeoPhotonics

“Anything that can be done to get high utilisation of your equipment, which represents your up-front investment, helps the business case"

Chris Pfistner, NeoPhotonics  

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ZTE takes PON optical line terminal lead

ZTE shipped 1.8 million passive optical network (PON) optical line terminals (OLTs) in 2011 to become the leading supplier with 41 percent of the global market, according to Ovum. 

"ZTE is co-operating with some Tier 1 operators in Europe and the US for 10GEPON and XGPON1 testing"

Song Shi Jie, ZTE

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Photonic integration specialist OneChip tackles PON

Briefing: PON

Part 1: Monolithic integrated transceivers

OneChip Photonics is moving to volume production of PON transceivers based on its photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design. The company believes that its transceivers can achieve a 20% price advantage.

"We will be able to sell [our integrated PON transceivers] at a 20% price differential when we reach high volumes"

Andy Weirich, OneChip Photonics

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R&D: At home or abroad?

ECI Telecom chose to set up its latest R&D site in Israel. Gazettabyte met with Chaim Urbach, ECI’s head of global R&D operations, to discuss why it decided to locate its latest site in Israel, and how the company can compete with the leading telecom players that have considerably larger R&D teams and budgets.

Omer Industrial Park in the Negev, Israel; the location of ECI Telecom's latest R&D centre.

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