My Gigabit/s Fiber in Paris Is Already Outdated – Say Hello to 10 and 40 Gbit/s PON

Since I know how a gigabit GPON fiber link feels and performs and that it's deployed significantly in some countries I can't but wonder when telecom operators in other countries stop praising DSL vectoring with 100 Mbit/s downlink and a few Mbit/s in the uplink as the future technology and become serious about fixed line optical network development!? Having said that I recently noticed that the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) I have in Paris with a line rate of 1 Gbit/s is actually quite out of date already.

10G-PON, already specified since 2010, is the successor technology and, as the abbreviation suggests, offers a line rate of 10 Gbit/s. According to the Wikipedia article that line rate can be shared by up to 128 users. And thankfully, PON networks are upgradable to 10G-PON as the fiber cable is reused by changing the ONT. Backwards compatibility is ensured as 10G-PON uses a different wavelength compared to GPON so both can coexist on the same fiber strand thus allowing a gradual update of subscribers by first changing the optical equipment in the distribution cabinet and subsequently the fiber devices in people's homes.

But that's not all as standardization of the successor to the successor is already full swing. NG-PON2 is the new kid on the block and will offer 40 Gbit/s downlink speeds on several wavelengths over a single fiber cable and 10 Gbit/s in the uplink direction. For details have a look at the ITU G.989.1 document that contains the requirements specification and G.989.2 for the physical layer specification.

So who's still talking about a measly 100 Mbit/s in the downlink?