ADTRAN claims 10Gbps breakthrough in operator fibre trials

Fixed line vendor ADTRAN has announced several customer trials of 10Gbps fibre services are ongoing, claiming a breakthrough for residential and enterprise consumer broadband.

The vendor has claimed that regional, municipal/utility providers and international Tier 1 carriers are all trialling FTTP (fibre to the premises) services which utilise an emerging ITU-approved architecture standard called XGS-PON. In theory XGS-PON should be capable of managing multiple symmetric 10Gbps wavelengths over the same fibre infrastructure, essentially multiplying the network’s capability and life-span.

ADTRAN claims the ongoing trials mean XGS-PON is beginning to realise its potential, and says operators will soon be benefitting from the revenue generation potential XGS-PON can deliver in terms of reliability, agility and speeds needed for business and mobile backhaul services over existing infrastructure.

“These trials are demonstrating new opportunities to converge residential Gigabit broadband and premium optical business services over a common 10Gbps access architecture,” said ADTRAN’s Fibre Access Product Manager Ryan McCowan. “XGS-PON allows service providers to double the life of their current optical network investment while gaining a head start towards future network capabilities.”

Meanwhile, in other fixed line news, Nokia has made its first optical-related announcement since completing the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. Specifically, it’s launching the catchily-titled Photonic Service Engine version 2, which Nokia claims doubles wavelength capacity and the number of wavelengths per fibre, helping to deliver 100G transport services.

Interestingly, the announcement came out of the recently renamed Nokia Bell Labs.

Nokia’s Head of Optical Networking, Sam Bucci, shed more light on the announcement and its significance for Nokia.

“When we introduced the industry’s first single carrier 100G solution in 2010 we became a leader in optical network transformations, a position that was further solidified when we released the first programmable 100G/200G line card,” he said. “With the launch of the PSE-2, our 500G Muxponder and the 1830 PSS-24x, we are again at the forefront of innovations, leading the way to 100G client services being the currency of modern optical networks. Thanks to the optical innovations of Nokia Bell Labs we are able to keep operators ahead of today’s aggressive bandwidth demand curve.”