BT and ZTE Are the First to Deploy XG-PON in a Live Customer Environment

Acomponent manufacturer in Cornwall is the first company to achieve hyperfast broadband download speeds of up to 10 Gbps over a real fibre network. That’s 100 times faster than 100 Mbps.

Just five months ago, electronic component manufacturer Arcol struggled to achieve 1.5 Mbps, but it was one of the first subscribers to BT’s fibre to the premises (FTTP) service. The export-driven company soon achieved 330 Mbps. Not content with this big upgrade, they were more than happy to be involved in part of the XG-PON proof-of-concept trial. XG-PON is the ITU’s next-generation standard for passive optical networks. It is capable of a startling 10 Gbps over standard fibre. BT first demonstrated hyperfast broadband in Cornwall and used ZTE equipment as part of the fibre broadband roll-out across the United Kingdom.

BT is rolling out superfast broadband to Cornwall in a £132 million program funded by the EU, BT and Cornwall Council. The program is being managed by Superfast Cornwall. The project was initially designed to provide superfast fibre-optic broadband to at least 80% of Cornwall by the end of 2014. However, in the spirit of progress, this coverage target has been increased to 95%, and BT has recently announced that it will also be taking superfast broadband to the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the mainland.

Arcol’s offices in Threemilestone Industrial Estate in Truro are connected by a 5 km direct fibre link to BT’s exchange in Truro. The trial involved running G- and XG-PON in tandem at the customer’s premises. The XG-PON technology was jointly developed by ZTE and BT and is designed to show that such high speeds can be achieved using the current infrastructure. BT added that the speeds accessible using the new XG-PON technology are only hampered by current computing and networking devices.

Ranulf Scarbrough, programme director for Superfast Cornwall Group said, “What is exciting about this trial is that these hyperfast speeds have been obtained over the exactly the same fibre that carries BT’s fibre broadband services today. All we are doing is changing the electronics at either end.”

BT engineers took one day to install the system in Arcol’s offices. BT ran in and connected the fibre optic cable and used a splitter to divide the line between the XG-PON 10 Gbps line and Arcol’s existing Superfast Cornwall 330 Mbps connection. An initial 300 MB test returned results of higher than 376 Mbps over G-PON. This result excited the Arcol team, but the BT engineers knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg. XG-PON was then switched on, and an ultrahigh definition (UHD) video was streamed direct from the Truro exchange at 850 Mbps. However, even this remarkable feat wasn’t even close to the potential of the system, with the full bandwidth being allocated to the firm being greater than was consumed at the peak times of traffic on the London Olympics media network.

BT hopes that the demonstration will show that existing cables can be used to provide far greater speeds than are currently available. Upgrading exchanges and user equipment can make a major difference.

Demand for network speed continues to grow, so newer and faster technologies are needed over and above existing standards. XG-PON, also known as 10G-PON, provides next-generation ultrafast capability for G-PON providers. It is designed to coexist with G-PON equipment on the same network. Triple play video, data, and voice services over IP are often cited as driving user demand for heavier usage of broadband that requires PON investment. While RF overlay has been popular in some countries and minimises congestion caused by video services, the convergence of HDTV and IPTV will create demand for bandwidth that exceeds the capacity of gigabit services in future. Teleworking and video conferencing are other applications that sometimes demand such triple play capabilities.

Other bandwidth-intensive applications include video-conferencing, interactive video, online interactive gaming, peer-to-peer networking, karaoke-on-demand, IP video surveillance, and cloud applications, where remote storage and computing resources provide online service on-demand to users with thin-client local systems. Cloud applications could take advantage of local content hosting, but 10 GPON may encourage explosive development of services that become feasible as users connect at faster speeds.

Business continuity systems may also include XG-PON for cost-effective real-time backup or replication of critical business systems. These systems may themselves be centralized services that support multiple sites. Other businesses may only need to connect several sites as a virtual private network (effectively a virtual office) or may have e-commerce services that require business partners to have sufficient connectivity for constant database access.

Many of these applications already become more popular for bandwidth leading to the formulation of Nielsen’s Law predicting demand for data downloads to double every year.