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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Edgecore exploits telecom’s open-networking opportunity

Part 2: Open networking

Edgecore Networks is expanding its open networking portfolio with cell-site gateways and passive optical networking (PON) platforms. 

The company is backing two cell-site gateway designs that aggregate traffic from baseband units for 4G and 5G mobile networks. One design is from the Open Compute Project (OCP) that is available now and the second is from the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) that is planned for 2019 (see table).

Edgecore has also announced PON optical line terminal (OLT) platforms addressing 10-gigabit XGS-PON and GPON.

Source: ADVA, Edgecore Networks

Edgecore is a wholly-ownedsubsidiary of Accton Technology, a Taiwanese original design manufacturer (ODM) employing over 700 networking engineers that reported revenues exceeding $1.2 billion in 2017.

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FSAN unveils roadmap plans

Part 2: Next-generation passive optical networks

The Full Service Access Network (FSAN) has outlined its vision for fibre access networks for the coming decade. 

FSAN is an industry forum that includes over 20 operators and 70 members overall. The group identifies service requirements and develops optical access technologies that are passed to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for standardisation.

Source: FSAN

“One of the messages of the roadmap is that, in the immediate future, what FSAN wants to do is evolve the existing standards,” says Peter Dawes, FSAN NGPON co-chair. 

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Telefonica tests XGS-PON

Part 1: XGS and TWDM passive optical networks

Telefonica is the latest operator to test XGS-PON, the 10-gigabit passive optical networking standard.

“Operators want to show they are taking the maximum from their fibre investment,” says Ana Pesovic, marketing manager for fibre at Nokia, the supplier of the XGS-PON equipment used for the operator’s lab tests. “Telefonica has been really aggressive in their fibre deployments in the last couple of years.”

Ana Pesovic

XGS-PON

Approved by the ITU-T in 2016, XGS-PON supports two rates: 10-gigabit symmetrical and the asymmetrical rate of 10 gigabits downstream (to the user) and 2.5 gigabits upstream.

XGS-PON has largely superseded the earlier XG-PON standard which supports the 10-gigabit asymmetrical rate only. “It is fair to say there is no traction for XG-PON,” says Pesovic. “Even in China [an early adopter of XG-PON], we see the interest slowly moving to XGS-PON.”

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