ORLANDO, Fla.—Nokia has launched a 25G PON starter kit solution to enable service providers to pursue new business revenue opportunities above 10 Gbps.
The 25G PON kit is designed to give operators the tools to leverage their PON networks to target businesses and wholesale carrier customers. Each kit can connect up to 10 companies and is available for immediate shipment.
PON networking platforms have mainly targeted residential broadband customers outside some targeted deployments, whether dedicated internet access (DIA), wavelengths, or Ethernet services; 10 Gbps has become the golden standard for business customers.
As service providers have rolled out XGS-PON across their footprint, they have offered business customers a range of business-grade speeds—2, 4 and 8 Gbps. This is the strategy seen by Lumos Networks, which began deploying XGS-PON in 2019 and others.
With 25G PON, operators can leverage their existing fiber assets to deliver accurate 10 Gbps speeds and beyond to businesses, farms, schools, and other enterprises. Nokia said that a true 10 Gbps service could help businesses to be more competitive and embrace resource-intensive cloud-based applications, virtual reality and AI.
Nokia’s 25G PON kit solution allows service providers to capitalize on 10G+ opportunities. The 25G PON starter kit bundles in one solution all the fiber broadband technology needed to deliver 1, 10 and 25G PON services to end-users, including line cards, optics, and Optical Network Terminals (ONTs).
Stefaan Vanhastel, VP of marketing and innovation for Fixed Networks at Nokia, said it is seeing some customers leverage PON to provide business services. “A growing number of service providers are offering business customers 2, 4, and 8 Gbps speed services over their PON networks,” he said. “They are finding it is a useful tool to provide business services.”
Rupert Wood, research director at Analysys Mason, said that depending on the SLAs, service providers can leverage 25G PON to “address the dedicated connectivity market with “true 10 Gbps and above symmetrical connectivity” today.
Expanding PON use cases
The advent of 25G PON enables several new use cases that extend beyond residential services. According to Dell’Oro Group, 550,000 25Gbps-Capable OLT ports have been delivered to the market, mainly via combo cards and optics that can support 2.5Gbps GPON, XGS-PON, and 25GS-PON from the same hardware and using the same ODN through the end of the first quarter.
Jeff Heynen, VP of research at Dell’Oro, wrote in the “Growing Interest in 25G-PON Drives Forecast Increases” report that if an average of 100-200,000 25GS-capable OLT ports are purchased by service providers every quarter, by the end of 2023, there will be over 1 million 25GS-capable OLT ports.
“The potential net result is anywhere from 500,000-700,000 OLT ports in service delivering enterprise, wholesale, and mobile transport services,” he said. “That is the relatively modest strategy behind 25GS-PON: To expand PON technologies' applicability beyond residential networks. Though vendors and operators have discussed it for years, we finally see that many operators have earmarked PON as a network-flattening technology across their residential, enterprise, mobile transport, and wholesale networks.”
Rupert Wood, research director for Analysys Mason, agrees.
“There is immediate commercial potential for disruptive new-entrant plays in the high-quality connectivity market, especially targeting the full 10Gbit/s leased-line market with very high-spec service-level agreements (SLAs),” he wrote in “Why and where 25G PON Makes Sense” blog post. “For established operators with significant legacy high-quality connectivity revenue, shifting to a multi-service xPON-based access network reduces costs, which is especially useful if they face lower-price competition from new fiber networks.”
Wood also sees potential for 25G PON for 5G as a tool to deliver low-latency 10 Gbps links to address small cell network deployments. Industry experts have cited that 5G mid-band has limitations in providing reliable indoor coverage. This issue will become exacerbated if 5G is used for private enterprise networks.
“Building penetration loss is more severe with the higher frequency mmWave frequencies that offer useful, targeted capacity where required,” he said. “Reutilizing FTTP infrastructure for indoor small-cell coverage makes commercial sense; not only do the lower, shared unit costs of a PTMP xPON network make denser deployments economically viable, but they turn what is generally thought of as a cost-pool into new opportunities.”
Growing provider support
While many in the broadband industry are looking beyond 25G PON, including ITU proposals for 50 PON, the growing use cases for PON and requirements beyond XGS-PON have given the entrée to 25G PON to address near-term needs from service providers.
“The current strength in fiber buildouts and the need to address new use cases today has resulted in a list of operators who can’t wait for 50G PON to be fully standardized, tested, and productized,” Heynen said. “As such, other industry standards groups, including the Broadband Forum, are working with 25GS-PON and looking at developing testing and interoperability standards for the technology.”
Heynen added that Tier 1 service providers, including AT&T, BT Openreach, Comcast, and Deutsche Telekom, have become more active in helping to define standards and working in tandem with industry organizations, such as ONF and the Broadband Forum to get them into the market.
“These operators know they have the scale, market potential, and, most importantly, internal technology and product development engineering teams to drive standards and influence the product roadmaps of their incumbent equipment suppliers,” he said. “And that’s what appears to be happening with 25GS-PON. The growing list of service providers taking part in the 25GS-PON MSA has a consensus around their PON technology choices: Use GPON and XGS-PON today for the bulk of your residential FTTH deployments, and then add in 25GS-PON using the same equipment and ODN where it makes strategic sense.”
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