Alloptic, Acreo demonstrate GEPON platform in Swedish national broadband test bed
June 29, 2005 Livermore, CA -- Alloptic, a developer of Gigabit Ethernet passive optical networks (GEPONs), announced that they have completed testing their products on Acreo's national broadband test bed in Hudiksvall, Sweden. The testing was part of a program led by Ericsson, who acted as systems integrator for the Alloptic equipment and provided the passive network infrastructure.
"The overall impression is that the Alloptic GEPON system is a mature and stable system for Ethernet fiber access," remarks Johan Gunnefur, manager of Ericsson's FTTX division. "It is an easy system to get up and running, and the management systems are very intuitive and usable. The equipment performed well, both in the lab delivering TV, telephony, and fast Internet, and subsequently also in the field, with real residential users."
"We at Ericsson are pleased with the success of the Alloptic products in the Acreo tests," adds Colin Goodwin, Ericsson's global product marketing manager of FTTX. "Many of our customers are asking us to provide PON solutions. The sophisticated engineering tests performed by Acreo will underpin our ability to deploy large-scale PON networks in conjunction with our partner, Alloptic."
Alloptic says its GEPON platform leverages a standard ITU PON architecture, while delivering a gigabit of bandwidth. According to the company, with a native ability to support traditional TDM voice over an Ethernet-based platform, the platform provides reliable telephone services while seamlessly supporting next-generation services such as IP HDTV.
Acreo is a Swedish research institute developing broadband technologies, and a partner in several European Union projects relating to broadband technology. In the test bed, broadband technologies are rigorously evaluated with real users and services.
"We're impressed by the stability and maturity of the Alloptic GEPON system. The qualities of the management system, e.g. bandwidth management, provisioning, and alarm features, make the [system] easy to operate in the field," concludes Per Karlsson, general manager for the Acreo broadband project. "Sweden is a leading European country in terms of the number of FTTX connections - so far predominantly realized by switched Ethernet. Considering the increasing market interest in GEPON, we therefore wanted to include GEPON in the test bed as a first mile solution, complementary to existing fiber point-to-point links and xDSL solutions."