Optical fiber access technology leads the communication storm

With the development of China's access industry, optical fiber access technology has become one of the mainstream technologies, and many branch technologies have emerged. GPON can meet the requirements of optical fiber access network. The increasing popularity of the optical fiber access market brings a rapid development opportunity for the new generation of optical fiber access technology. However, the debate over the future development of FTTH over EPON still persists. At the May 28 Optical Communication Forum held on April 9, 2008, relevant experts said, the product's development capability, the space for sustained cost reduction, and the scale of its global use will ultimately determine who can lead the future development of FTTH.

Who is more suitable for technology?

In fact, many operators do not care whether EPON is used or what products and technologies are used to better meet the requirements of optical fiber access technology. From the perspective of market application, EPON and the two technologies have a large number of international supporters. EPON is dominant in Asia Pacific, especially Japan and South Korea. In the global market, especially the North American market, more and more operators are adopting the service.

Chang gang, head of the marketing and Strategic Planning Department of Ericsson China Communications Ltd, said: "In the long term, GPON will be a mainstream technology throughout the development of the optical fiber access technology. From next year onwards, GPON will be dominant in the entire market ." Changgang believes that the main factors that determine GPON will be the mainstream technology include: first, GPON provides higher bandwidth, more efficient bandwidth utilization, and further access distance, the telecom-level quality assurance for all services provided by GPON is also very important, because the support for all services mentioned earlier requires the telecom-level service quality as a guarantee. Third, GPON is also an important factor in supporting end-to-end management.

In addition, GPON also has a feature that supports full-service broadband. GPON supports mobile backhaul. In some cases, GPON can be used as a support for mobile base station backhaul when the carrier performs some bundled deployment or new point deployment. GPON supports higher bandwidth and better terminal management, which will bring Smooth Support for Higher Business bandwidth development capabilities to operators.

Who is more cost-effective?

Economic benefits are of great concern to operators. There are many factors that affect the cost, such as the complexity of the optical fiber access technology, the scale of production, and the scale of market applications. The "entry threshold" of EPON is very low, and it is easy to attract a large number of manufacturers to join the EPON Industry Alliance. EPON inherits the excellent tradition of "simplicity is beauty" of Ethernet. It only provides the added functions with the minimal modification possible, which makes it easy for Traditional Ethernet chip manufacturers to design EPON chips. Currently, the price of the third-generation EPON chip is not higher or even lower than that of the previous two generations.

Regarding the high cost of GPON, Changgang believes that with the expansion of the application scale, the cost of GPON is continuously decreasing. "So far, the large-scale application of GPON may reach a critical point. We can see that the world's major operators will basically promote or build FTTx in different forms. At the same time, as an international standard, GPON receives a large number of vendor support. From the operator's point of view, GPON, or a number of carriers already deployed on GPON are also considered. In terms of the GPON standard, the Standardization progress is quite fast, and various manufacturers are preparing to launch the next generation of GPON products. With the increase of applications, the cost of GPON has become an inevitable trend ." Although the prices of GPON units vary, the overall cost of GPON is not unacceptable for carriers.

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