The Deployment Survey of 10G PON form Global Broadband Carrier

Introduction

Broadbandtrends (BBT) recently conducted a broadband operator survey to investigate their 10G PON technology deployment plan. 10G PON provides operators with higher bandwidth and symmetric services while addressing the bandwidth, latency and densification requirements of emerging 5G networks. GPON is still the most popular FTTH technology today, but its bandwidth capabilities and asymmetry characteristics do not provide enough capacity to support the expected increase in bandwidth demand.

Survey results of 10G PON

1. The 10G PON technology selected by service providers for residential and commercial users is XGS-PON.

2. Cost is still the biggest problem facing operators planning to deploy 10G PON.

3. The key factor driving drive operators to deploy 10G PON technology is that the converged architecture can support multiple applications while reusing existing passive ODNs.

4. Commercial services will be the primary initial application for 10G PON deployment, followed by residential triple play, and in the future will provide mobile network support.

5. Most operators do not plan to apply 10G PON to their homes by 2020.

6. Although 10G PONs offer very high bandwidth, most operators only plan to provide 2-5 Gbps of bandwidth for the residential market.

7. Most operators will adopt a gradual migration path in their 10G PON evolution, and they will not adopt NG-PON2 before or after 2020.

8. Higher bandwidth PON (25G) is not expected until 2024 or later.

Summary

Currently, 10G PON technologies that operators can adopt include 10G EPON, XG-PON, XGS-PON and NG-PON2. Among them, NG-PON2 is considered to be the “ultimate” future verification technology – providing multiple wavelengths, supporting up to 40Gbps (and even higher in the future), and capable of serving multiple/different sections at each wavelength. In addition, the technology combines wavelengths to provide higher bandwidth, making it well-suited for future bandwidth growth.