Nokia and Elisa trial 100G PON over live fibre network

Following the trial, Finnish operator Elisa will deploy Nokia’s Lightspan MF solution onto its existing fibre network to deliver ‘ultra-broadband services’ across Finland. It will be the first service provider in Europe to demonstrate 25G, 50G, and 100G PON services, so claims the release.

Elisa deployed Nokia’s Altiplano platform to support 10G XGS-PON deployments which is supposed to help automate and improve the management, scalability and reliability of a network.

The firms say that the trial demonstrates how different PON technologies can be combined on the same fibre, and how operators can upgrade their network to meet higher demand in the future.

The release says AI is going to be the driver of this future higher bandwidth demand, and cites a Bell Labs forecast which claims total AI traffic will reach 91 EB (exabytes) per month by 2030 in Western Europe.

“Nokia’s fibre solution will help us significantly enhance our fibre network to deliver some of the fastest internet speeds in the world,” said Sami Rajamäki, Vice President of Network Services at Elisa. “We’re excited to be the first in Europe to show up to 100G PON speeds in a live fibre network trial and demonstrate the world-class capabilities we can deliver to support the next generation of broadband services.

“By partnering with Nokia, we can showcase our commitment to guaranteeing the best, high-quality services for our customers. History has shown that it is impossible to forecast all the new use cases for greater speeds, i.e. what new 25 to 100G connections will enable in the future, but we know that for example online gaming and industrial users are among the first to benefit from ever faster broadband connections”

Matthieu Bourguignon, Senior Vice President and Head of Europe for Network Infrastructure business at Nokia added: “We see demand for high-speed internet access surging in Europe with end users and enterprises alike increasingly seeking reliable, secure, high-quality broadband connectivity.

“Our Lightspan and Altiplano Access platforms give operators like Elisa the tools they need to increase speed, provide superior performance, automate functions and future-proof its fibre network. Our fibre technology provides the perfect solution for operators that want to quickly increase capacity and flexibly migrate to next-generation fibre technologies.”

Nokia is claiming a European first with this one, and earlier in the year alongside Australian operator NBN it laid its claim to the world’s first 100G PON tech demo on a live network. At the time the maximum fibre speed on offer from NBN was 1 Gbps, so that’s quite a step up.