NSN cools on FTTH, drops GPON

Nokia Siemens Networks confirmed that it is exiting the market for gigabit passive optical network systems for fiber-to-the-home networks. The vendor's move comes after some speculation, and NSN essentially believes that alternative fiber architectures, such as fiber-to-the-curb, will drive the market for now, rather than FTTH. The decision also comes a few months after Tellabs exited GPON activities at Verizon Communications. Tellabs still offers GPON capabilities, though the GPON market has become increasingly competitive, with Adtran also entering the space.

NSN has been making some interesting moves lately. The vendor also seemed to cool on provider backbone transport technology after BT back-burnered the controversial technology. More recently, the vendor won a major voice network management deal from U.S. telco Embarq, and expressed plans to get more involved in the North American market.

With GPON in the rearview mirror, NSN now plans to focus on DSL and development of next-generation optical access (NGOA) technologies. Some carriers are sticking with DSL and FTTC-like architectures for now, or only pursuing FTTH in greenfield deployment scenarios. BT was one carrier that recently committed to that sort of plan.

For more:
- see this story [1] at Light Reading

Related articles:
BT announced its fiber network plans last week. BT report [2]
NSN also recently became less excited about PBT. NSN report [3]
NSN posted strong revenue growth last week. NSN report [4]