Verizon has successfully completed a test of next generation passive optical network (NG-PON2) technology over its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure, noting that the new platform will ‘easily’ be able to support downlink/uplink speeds of 10Gbps when commercially available.

However, a full blown launch is still some way off and dependent on the availability of equipment to support business services such as switched Ethernet services. Meanwhile, according to Lee Hicks, vice president of network technology for Verizon, the technology will have system capacity to increase speeds to 40Gbps-80Gbps as market demands grow. This will be possible by ‘simply adding new colours of light onto the existing fibre, each augmenting the capacity by up to 10Gbps’.

NG-PON2 with multiple architectures, stacking WDM, symmetrical rates will be available in 2015.

The field tests took place on a three-mile stretch of network between Verizon’s central office in Framingham, Massachusetts and a FiOS customer’s home. The trial followed extensive testing in Verizon’s laboratories in Waltham, Massachusetts. The trial utilised equipment from domestic vendor Cisco and PT Inovacao of Portugal.

Telegeography