Verizon announced that it as successfully completed what it believes is the first interoperability trial of NG-PON2 (next generation passive optical network) technology at its Verizon Labs location in Waltham, Mass.
This trial demonstrated that equipment from different vendors on either end of a single fiber -- at the service provider's endpoint and at the customer's endpoint -- can be used to deliver service without impacting the end user.
This breakthrough in NG-PON2 interoperability will provide increased flexibility and resiliency as well as the ability to meet customer needs more quickly. Until now, equipment from the same vendor had to be used on both endpoints. The selected participating companies were ADTRAN, Broadcom, Cortina Access and Ericsson (in partnership with Calix). The trial tested plans aligned with Verizon's Open OMCI specifications, which define the OLT-to-ONT interface and will be shared with the industry in the next few months.
Verizon is evaluating NG-PON2 technology to provide increased speeds, functionality and reliability to customers on its fiber access network, including the Fios network. This technology supports up to 40G of total capacity and up to 10G speeds per customer, both upstream and downstream, over a single fiber. With NG-PON2 technology, Verizon said that it will be able to easily increase system capacity by adding wavelengths to meet the demand for traffic drivers such as ultra-high definition video, virtual reality applications and cloud services.
This interoperability trial is the next natural step in the company's plan to implement NG-PON2. In 2015, Verizon in partnership with Altice Labs had successfully completed field testing of NG-PON2 technology.
Dr Denis Khotimsky, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff
Verizon has chosen NG-PON2, which is an ITU-T-developed international standard, for its next-generation network. This technology is the foundation for providing services that deliver multi-gigabit speeds.
Dr Vincent O'Byrne, Director of Technology at Verizon
Verizon and the participants in this trial are focused on establishing NG-PON2 as the industry's first PON standard that can be deployed in an interoperable fashion from Day One.
