Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) is set for growth, predicts Alcatel-Lucent, as carriers look to meet the increased the demand for high-bandwidth services like IPTV and VoD.
Nicolas Van Den Abeele, VP of access division for Alcatel-Lucent Asia Pacific, told Telecom Asia at the BBWF that AT&T, Verizon Communications and France Telecom have already committed to GPON.
While EPON is more established than GPON in Asia Pacific, due to significant deployment in Japan since 2005, vendors expect that more and more carriers turning to GPON in the future.
For one thing, Van Den Abeele says GPON has been fully standardized and has advantages over EPON for both capex and opex. For instance, GPON can provide double the bandwidth capacity than EPON.
This is particular vital for carriers to deploy services like IPTV or HDTV, which require a robust and scalable platform that provides higher bandwidth.
He says expect GPON will see wider deployment across Asia, including Japan, driven by the increased popularity of IPTV, P2P and video sharing services like YouTube, which all led to a corresponding expansion of the need for increased bandwidth capacity, pushing carriers in Asia to increase investment in higher bandwidth through FTTN (fiber-to-the-node) and FTTU (fiber-to-the-user).
He says its GPON solution has been deployed SingTel and Hanaro Telecom.