If there's one thing that continues to vex service providers that have not migrated beyond first generation Fiber to the Home (FTTH) technologies, it's the cost of network equipment and deployment costs.
According to a new Infonetics Research survey, service providers that are examining next-gen FTTH technologies are waiting to see the price of equipment, including PON, to drop.
Although they would like lower priced equipment, service providers realize that at some point they'll need to migrate to a next-gen technology such as 10G EPON or WDM-PON to keep up with the consumer's appetite for content and higher data speeds.
Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access at Infonetics Research, said that while service providers "know they will have to keep pace with growing bandwidth demands," they also won't "replace existing FTTH technologies until the pricing of next generation technologies--including 10G EPON, XGPON1 (asymmetric 10G PON), and WDM-PON--reaches parity with current equipment prices."
In considering a next-gen FTTH Optical Network Terminal (ONT) solution, service providers are looking for products that include VoIP, 802.11n, and Home Phoneline Network Alliance (HPNA) home networking capabilities.
Right now, service providers appear to in the evaluation stage of next-gen FTTH.
Verizon, for one, conducted trials of 10 Gbps/2.5 Gbps connection at a customer home in Taunton, Mass. over a Motorola XG-PON system and with Huawei.
For more:
- see the release
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