Alcatel-Lucent to upgrade Tonami's HFC network to FTTH

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) says it will upgrade the access network of Japanese cable operator Tonami Satellite Communications Television to become a 100% fiber-optic network infrastructure.

Tonami is migrating from hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network to high-speed fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), enabling high Internet access speeds, with improved reliability compared to HFC.

Using Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON technology, Tonami will be able to increase its current best 120-Mbps downlink Internet data rate by a factor of up to 20X. Tonami plans to use this capability to enhance the triple-play service to its 42,000 customers in Tonami City.

Alcatel-Lucent and systems integration partner Itochu Cable Systems will supply Tonami Cable with the systems vendor’s ISAM product family including the 7360 ISAM FX and 5520 Access Management System to support GPON-enabled FTTH.

Tonami will be the first Japanese cable operator to use Alcatel-Lucent’s 7360 ISAM FX GPON equipment to bring ultra-high speed Internet service to the homes of the citizens of Tonami bundled with voice and TV-services like HDTV.

Tsuneharu Kawai, president of Tonami Satellite Communications Television, said, “We need to quickly migrate our current legacy HFC infrastructure to FTTH, to cope with the changing customer needs of cable-TV and high-speed Internet access services, for faster downloading, interactive gaming, cloud services, or to accommodate the growing number of 4K/8K TVs, tablets, and smartphones at home. For this, we wanted an FTTH solution that is globally proven and will allow us to easily move to 10G and 40G. Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON FTTH solution was a perfect fit for our needs.”

Alcatel-Lucent says it is involved in 100-plus FTTH deployments and more than 160 FTTH projects worldwide, of which more than 140 are GPON-based.

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