Verizon has successfully completed a field test of NG-PON2 technology on its FttH network from its central office in Framingham, Massachusetts, to a FiOS customer home 3 miles away and to a nearby business location. The field trial using equipment from Cisco and PT Inovacao follows testing at the operator’s labs in Waltham. It consisted of a new optical line terminal (ONT) generating four wavelengths, each capable of operating at 10 Gbps/2.5 Gbps. Later versions are envisioned to support 10 Gbps symmetrical speeds and the technology will have the capacity to grow to 40-80 Gbps by adding wavelengths, each augmenting capacity by 10 Mbps.
One of the tests transmitted the NG-PON2 signals over a fibre serving live GPON customers, proving that the FttH network can deliver GPON and NG-PON2 simultaneously. The field trial also validated an important service reliability feature of NG-PON2. In this test, a fault in the central office equipment was simulated and the customer’s ONT autonomously tuned to another wavelength, restoring its own 10 Gbps service in seconds.
Verizon said it will issue a request for proposals later this year to purchase hardware and software for the new NG-PON2 platform. The company expects the high-speed applications to be most attractive to business customers initially, but will spread to consumers with increasing adoption of 4K video content and IoT applications.
