More than 90% of the fiber equipment Nokia ships in the U.S. today is for XGS-PON, but the vendor is already gearing up for the future – literally – with a new 25G starter kit. But there’s a catch: for all that Nokia has been going on about its Buy America compatibility lately, the new kit won’t meet those requirements, at least not initially.
The 25G PON starter kit includes the necessary optics and optical network terminals (ONTs) to help operators upgrade parts of their network to next-generation speeds of 10 Gbps and up. But it’s not designed for mass deployments – the kit contains enough components to connect 10 customers with 25G. It can be readily used by customers who have XGS-PON network gear based on Nokia’s Quillion chipset, which is upgradable to 25G.
Stefaan Vanhastel, VP marketing and innovation for Nokia Fixed Networks, told Fierce Telecom the idea is to enable schools, hospitals or businesses which require faster speeds today to get them.
The kit is available immediately. But given Nokia won’t be turning up its recently announced U.S. manufacturing facilities until early 2024, that means the gear inside the kit won’t be made in the country – yet. Nokia has said it is planning to manufacture ONTs as well as optical line terminals (OLTs) and OLT optical modules at a facility in Wisconsin.
“In the end this is a starting point,” Vanhastel said. “Depending on customer needs and pickup of new services, et cetera, we will of course decide on additional equipment to be manufactured in the U.S.”
Tackling in-home issues
Separately, Nokia launched new Corteca home connectivity software which is designed to give operators more control over customers’ in-home connectivity experience.
The software suite includes three elements: an intelligent controller in the cloud (Corteca Cloud), an application marketplace (Corteca Applications) and software for gateways and Wi-Fi beacons (Corteca Device Software). Nokia did already offer a Wi-Fi Cloud Controller, meaning the really new bit in this announcement is the app store.
Vanhastel said Corteca is something Nokia has been “working on for a while,” in response to the fact that “Wi-Fi is the new bottleneck and a major headache.”
He added the app store will more easily allow operators to monetize their broadband networks with new services like optimizations for gaming and other use cases, parental controls, firewalls, VPNs and SD-WAN.
“Most operators understand that they need to somehow take control of the in-home Wi-Fi network. The opportunity to run applications on the CPE in the home, we’ve been talking about that more as a proof-of-concept thing for about a year and a half,” Vanhastel said. “So, this is now something that is widely available and easy to use with more applications available for operators.”