This Is FiOS. This Is ... Even Bigger (10 Gbps)

WALTHAM, MA – Verizon's latest field trial of  XG-PON (10 Gbps passive optical network) successfully connected a FiOS customer location with 10 Gbps downstream and 2.5 Gbps upstream. The company says the test demonstrates the capability of FiOS to accommodate new and emerging video services, as well as to satisfy the growing demand for streaming video content and other bandwidth-intensive applications.

The latest field trial was conducted in May in Taunton, Mass., with an XG-PON system developed by Motorola, which has supplied much of the PON equipment Verizon is already using. It was the first test in a residential setting, and also the first to use existing central-office equipment (with new line cards).

At the customer's home, the optical network terminal received the 10/2.5 Gbps feed and used two data communication ports to simultaneously provide transmission speeds of close to 1 Gbps to each of two PCs inside the home. Combined, the two ports delivered approximately 1.85 Gbps in aggregate bandwidth in each direction.

Tests were designed to simulate what two different customers might experience while using their PCs to download, upload or share files to the Internet when served by a 10GPON system. In addition, speed tests were performed to Verizon's speed test server located more than 400 miles away in Reston, Va., realized speeds of up to 915 Mbps between the PC and the speed test server.

"XG-PON can provide the capacity needed to support the explosive growth in bandwidth envisioned for new and emerging services such as 3DTV and Ultra HDTV, and the growing demand for streaming video content to the PC and TV, as well as the increased use of concurrent applications," says Vincent O'Byrne, director of technology for Verizon's FTTP architecture and design effort.

The Verizon technology team plans to continue testing XG-PON with other suppliers in the laboratory and in the network, and also, by year-end, to submit to suppliers a request for information for XG-PON technology.

Dual Network Link Tried

Verizon's latest test used Motorola equipment deployed with dual fibers from an optical line terminal in a Verizon switching facility to a combiner that coupled the XG-PON system with the existing GPON system. This is an approach covered in the standards. The dual fiber linkage is seen as a way to reduce the overall costs of XG-PON and is under investigation by suppliers and service providers. On the customer-facing side of the network, the test data traveled over a single FiOS fiber link to the customer test location.

"We continue to explore technologies that will allow Verizon to further evolve our FiOS network toward the functionality and speed the market will require," says Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president of technology for Verizon. "As an example, it would take a customer less than three minutes to download a 20 gigabyte, Blu-ray movie over a 1 Gbps link, as opposed to close to four and a half hours over a 10 Mbps Internet connection. A business customer using this service could backup data on an online server every night in just a few minutes, as opposed to hours.

"As we've said before, the fiber itself is passive; it's what we do with the electronics that will leverage its capacity," he adds.