Nokia launches a new fixed-line chipset family

Finnish kit vendor Nokia has unveiled a new chipset family called Quillion that is designed to get the best out of fibre networks.

The name may have been chosen to imply a really big number, but it could also refer to the crossguard of a sword, or even a town in central Chile. Who knows? One of its USPs does seem to be to introduce a degree of future-proofing to fibre networks its used on, such that data rates of 10 Gbps won’t be a problem.

“In a 5G world, consumers will expect a gigabit experience regardless if they are at home or on the go,” said Sandra Motley, President of Fixed Networks at Nokia. “Our Quillion chipset is designed to deliver gigabit broadband to every home, using broadband technologies like fibre to complement 5G in massive scale access networks. This allows operators to efficiently connect more people with higher speeds, and positively impacts their business case.”

“Nokia’s Quillion chipset family supports diverse upgrade scenarios, whether large-scale, high-density migrations or selective migrations, across multi-vendor and multi-access technologies,” said Julie Kunstler, Principal Analyst at Ovum. “It also incorporates time-critical and low-latency capabilities, enabling the use of 5G for both access and transport applications by customers. These functions are essential for operators transitioning to next-generation networks.”

The top-line narrative is that this is the chip for all your PON needs, including easy switch from GPON to NG-PON. Nokia also claims it’s optimised to support low-latency 5G applications as well as network slicing. For the more nostalgic CSPs it supports the latest Gfast and Vplus copper technologies too.