Adtran has announced that Verizon has selected its SDN-optimised Next Generation Passive Optical Network 2 (NG-PON2) solution for lab trials.
The partners are testing a fibre-to-the-Home solution that meets both business and residential needs and is capable of scaling to 40G and beyond.
NG-PON2 (Next Generation Passive Optical Network 2, or ITU-T G.989) is the first multi-wavelength access standard, promising a multi-gigabit broadband experience for residential and business subscribers.
Testing will be conducted at Verizon’s Innovation Lab in Waltham, Massachusetts, and will focus on several features of NG-PON2, including the implementation of a tunable multiple wavelength 40 Gigabit per second capability to support a mix of services on a common converged platform. This capability enables carriers to address the increase in demand for critical service segments including residential Gigabit broadband, big data, IoT and premium cloud and enterprise services growth and expansion.
The flexibility provided by this open, disaggregated architecture should provide lower first-cost and positions Verizon for fully programmable NG-PON2.
Verizon said it plans to deploy a number of business services in 2017, followed by residential services as the technology matures and the market demands. Verizon said that it selected NG-PON2 because of the associated deployment efficiencies, requiring only a minimal change in centralised electronics to implement. NG-PON2 technology is fully compatible with Verizon’s current underlying fiber optic infrastructure.
“NG-PON2, as evidenced by Verizon’s commitment to it, can be a game changer as service providers look to advance their service capabilities over existing access infrastructures and underpin the open, programmable, scalable service architectures of the future,” said Jay Wilson, Adtran senior vice president, technology, and strategy. “Adtran's NG-PON2 platform leverages innovative optic technologies to help overcome the most costly part of FTTH architecture so that the business case can broaden to include business and residential use cases.”
