Tauxigny, France, November 13, 2017: Leading industry names from across the globe came together to accelerate the development of PON technology at the second XGS-PON Interoperability Plugfest.
XGS-PON is based on the ITU-T’s latest Recommendation (ITU-T G.9807.1), providing a symmetrical 10Gbit/s capability over a fiber infrastructure that can co-exist with legacy 2.5Gbit/s G-PON.
Organized by Laboratoire des Applications Numériques (LAN), in collaboration with the Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Group and the Broadband Forum, this year’s Plugfest focused on interoperability between XGS-PON Optical Line Terminations and Optical Network Units (ONUs), as well as the coexistence between various PON technologies, including G-PON and NG-PON2. Participating companies included ADTRAN, Broadcom, Calix, CommScope, Econet, Huawei, Intel, MT2, Nokia, Sagemcom, TiBit Communications and ZTE.
“Since we held the first Plugfest last year, momentum around PON has been growing and this second event underpins the wider activities being carried out,” said Thierry Doligez, Director of LAN. “The industry is very much working together to ensure that when it comes to deploying PON technologies, operators have a wide choice of interoperable solutions and can deploy the technology cost-effectively.”
All equipment vendors, FSAN and Broadband Forum members were able to improve the interoperability of their products by testing them against other solutions presented during the event. This was to the major satisfaction of the supporting operator members of these organizations, among which was Orange as a contributor to the test plan.
“Efficient interoperability testing and its next step ONU certification process is essential to Orange before envisioning any significant deployment of a technology generation,” said Christian Gacon, Director of Wireline Network and Infrastructure at Orange Labs. “XG(S)-PON test events prove the basic standards sanity check and enable the next step consisting in common technical specifications amongst major operators worldwide to focus the industry towards a bulk first market for the technology.”
For the Broadband Forum, the Plugfests are an extension of its PON interoperability activities, which include the BBF.247 G-PON and XG-PON1 ONU Certification program, which is being extended to include XGS-PON and NG-PON2.
“The latest Plugfest further extended our work in the field of PON interoperability, addressing the need to secure both maturity of the ITU-T Recommendations and provide a migration path to operators,” said Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum CEO. “The large number of engineers this Plugfest attracted, from an impressive breadth of companies, highlights that collaboration and standardization is incredibly important for the broadband industry as we move towards the next generation of fiber access.”
For more information on the Broadband Forum’s testing and certification, visit the Broadband Forum website at www.broadband-forum.org.
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