Last week, we discussed the features and present benefits of XGS-PON. This week, we’ll look a bit farther into the future, and explore some of the factors driving the need for 10G PON bandwidth, as well as why XGS-PON today makes sense for your network tomorrow.
What’s Driving Bandwidth Needs?
Much of the need for higher speeds over last-mile ODNs stems from residential customers. Downloading and streaming HD video content onto large television screens requires extensive bandwidth per customer. Additional IoT products from HD security cameras to kitchen appliances put further strain on current resources. This is particularly true of higher-density, multi-tenant buildings, for which 10G to the premises is especially necessary.
Another residential customer benefit of XGS-PON in particular is its symmetry. Users are no longer merely passive consumers of content; a rise in user-generated content will require higher upload speeds as well.
However, bandwidth pressure doesn’t exclusively come from residential customers. Enterprise and health care providers also have increasingly demanding requirements. For the former, flexible remote work arrangements can drive a need for multi-location HD video conferencing. For the latter, bandwidth drivers include robust EHR systems and high-resolution medical imaging.
The Future: XGS-PON and 5G
After converging residential and business services onto a common ODN with XGS-PON, there will still be room for a 5G deployment as well. In fact, certain service providers (including Verizon) are considering NG-PON2 for a role in 5G fronthaul, backhaul, or both. Others looking further into the future are considering WDM-PON, which will be able to support up to 25G downstream, for the same fronthaul and backhaul applications. Neither of these deployments would directly spell the end of XGS-PON, due to their respective places on the spectrum, as shown below:
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