100 Gig PON Tested by Nokia

GPON (gigabit passive optical networks) technology, deployed by most fiber-to-the-home networks, is capable of 2.5 Gbps bandwidth to a group of customers served by the same splitter. XGS-PON, the next generation PON technology, can do 10 Gbps and has been deployed by several operators, including Cedar Falls Utilities. Now Nokia Bell Labs (Nokia is a CBAN Associate Member) has announced a lab trial of 100 Gbps PON technology.

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The trial took place in a Vodafone lab in Germany last week. Nokia's innovation is capable of delivering speeds of up to 100 Gbps on a single wavelength, ten times the best current PON version. It's still just a trial, of course, and field implementation is likely several years away. But the ability to do 100 Gbps over a single PON wavelength could represent the next wave (pun intended) of fiber network innovation. While a developing technology called NG-PON2 promises to deliver 40 Gbps, it requires 4 wavelengths bonded together. That significantly increases the complexity of the lasers at both the fiber hub and the customer premise.