Alcatel-Lucent's TWDM-PON Carries Four 10G Wavelengths

Alcatel-Lucent introduced the industry’s first TWDM-PON (Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexed Passive Optical Networks), a new fixed, ultra-broadband access technology for scaling the capacity of existing fiber networks.

TWDM-PON uses four wavelengths per fiber, giving a total capacity of 40 Gbps. An operator can choose to deliver different services over each wavelength, enabling residential, business and mobile backhaul services to be carried over a single fiber.

TWDM-PON technology is supported by Alcatel-Lucent‘s 7360 Intelligent Services Access Manager FX solution.  The company is introducing a new 4-port TWDM-PON line card and optical network unit supporting 10Gbps symmetrical bitrate. Products will be available in the first quarter of 2015.

Alcatel-Lucent and Vodafone have been co-developing TWDM-PON since 2010 as a potential successor to GPON. During this time, the companies have contributed to its standardization and completed a successful trial. Significantly, TWDM-PON can co-exist with current PON systems.

Alcatel-Lucent said TWDM-PON also enables a ‘pay as you grow’ model, allowing operators to easily and cost effectively increase bandwidth as required. Wavelength multiplexing means different operators can easily share the same infrastructure. This can facilitate competition (for example, a municipal-owned network can be leased to different service providers) or cooperation (operators can co-invest in a shared fiber network in order to accelerate ultra-broadband deployments).

“TWDM-PON is ground-breaking technology that will give us greater control over network capacity and increased flexibility when provisioning new services. We have worked closely with Alcatel Lucent to develop the technology and we look forward to evaluating it on our network in Spain,” stated Matt Beal of Vodafone Group.

Federico Guillén, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Fixed Networks business: “For the last four years Alcatel-Lucent and Vodafone have been working closely together to evolve PON technology. Our first TWDM-PON solution reflects that collaboration. Alcatel-Lucent is committed to a program of innovation; we have long been the technology leader in both copper and fiber fixed access technologies and we are extending this further with this new development of PON. Vodafone has played a vital role in preparing TWDM-PON as an industry-agreed standard by looking at its own potential usage in different countries for both fixed and mobile operations.”

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2014/alcatel-lucent-extends-capacity-existing-fiber-based-ultra-broadband-access-networks-breakthrough