Verizon is getting closer to the commercial rollout of Next Generation Passive Optical Network, NG-PON2 fiber-to-the-premises technology with the final lab testing with two leading equipment vendors in its Innovation Lab in Waltham, Massacchusetts. The Operator via an RFP (Request For Proposals), has narrowed down Ericsson (which has partnered with Calix) and ADTRAN as two potential suppliers for the commercial rollout scheduled for 2017.
Starting this month, Verizon will begin the initial testing that will focus on several features of NG-PON2, including performance tuning, ability to carry residential and business services on the same platform, and interoperability and conformance testing to meet Verizon ONT specifications.
NG-PON2 is touted to support up to 40G of total capacity and up to 10G speeds per customer, both upstream and downstream, over a single fiber – a tenfold increase over some of the current speeds in the industry. Using the NG-PON2 technology, Verizon plans to deploy a number of business services in 2017, followed by residential services as the technology matures and the market expands.
In 2015, Verizon partnered with Cisco and PT Inovação to successfully complete the field testing of NG-PON2 from its central office in Framingham to a FiOS customer's home.
Last year the ITU-T (International Telecommunications Union Telecommunications Standardization Sector) approved NG-PON2 specifications, paving the way to establish NG-PON2 as the next step in PON technology.
Vincent O'Byrne, Ph.D., Director of Network Planning for Verizon
When it comes to NG-PON2, ADTRAN and Ericsson/Calix have developed new designs and some novel, yet different, approaches that put them at the forefront of the industry.
