Verizon has completed a field trial of a second XG-PON fiber-optic distribution system connecting at 10 Gbps downstream and 2.5 Gbps upstream to a FiOS customer location in Taunton, Mass. The test, which was completed in May, used an XG-PON system developed by Motorola.
The field test used Motorola equipment deployed with dual fibers from an OLT (optical line terminal) in a Verizon switching facility to a combiner that coupled the XG-PON system with the existing GPON system. On the customer-facing side of the network, the test data traveled over a single FiOS fiber link to the customer test location.
At the customer's home, the optical network terminal (ONT) received the 10/2.5 Gbps feed and used two data communication ports to simultaneously provide transmission speeds of close to 1 Gbps to each of two PCs inside the home. Combined, the two ports delivered approximately 1.85 Gbps in aggregate bandwidth in each direction. In addition, speed tests were performed to Verizon's speed test server located more than 400 miles away in Reston, Va., realized speeds of up to 915 Mbps between the PC and the speed test server.
Verizon said the test demonstrates the capability of its FiOS network to scale to greater speeds. The company noted that the alternate network link approach used at the OLT covered in the standards. The dual fiber linkage is seen as a way to reduce the overall costs of XG-PON and is under investigation by suppliers and service providers.
"XG-PON can provide the capacity needed to support the explosive growth in bandwidth envisioned for new and emerging services such as 3DTV and Ultra HD TV, and the growing demand for streaming video content to the PC and TV, as well as the increased use of concurrent applications," said Vincent O'Byrne, director of technology for Verizon's FTTP architecture and design effort.
Motorola is already a supplier of BPON and GPON optical networking equipment to Verizon.
The Verizon technology team plans to continue testing XG-PON with other suppliers in the laboratory and in the network, and also, by year-end, to submit to suppliers a request for information for XG-PON technology.
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- In December 2009, Verizon announced its first field-tests of XG-PON. XG-PON signal was tested independently on a dedicated passive optical network (PON) as well as overlaid on a fiber providing FiOS service to a customer. The overlay test verified there was no interference between the XG-PON signal and the regular FiOS signal using gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology and running at 2.5 Gbps downstream and 1.24 Gbps upstream. The test was conducted recently in southern Massachusetts. Previously, Verizon tested the XG-PON signal in the company's Waltham laboratory. The XG-PON trial consisted of a new optical line terminal (OLT) installed in the Verizon central office, generating a 10 Gbps XG-PON signal transmitted over a wavelength, or color of light. Two tests were conducted: One test transmitted the XG-PON signal by itself on a separate PON fiber between the central office and a new optical network terminal (ONT) device at a customer's home. In the other test, the XG-PON stream was merged as a separate wavelength onto an already-operating live fiber running FiOS with GPON at 2.5 Gbps to provide a total downstream flow of 12.5 Gbps. This test used equipment from Huawei Technologies.
