XGS-PON interoperability advances after second Plugfest

TAUXIGNY, France, Nov. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leading industry names from across the globe came together to accelerate the development of PON technology at the second XGS-PON Interoperability Plugfest.

XGS-PON is based on the ITU-T's latest Recommendation (ITU-T G.9807.1), providing a symmetrical 10Gbit/s capability over a fiber infrastructure that can co-exist with legacy 2.5Gbit/s G-PON.

Organized by Laboratoire des Applications Numériques (LAN), in collaboration with the Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Group and the Broadband Forum, this year's Plugfest focused on interoperability between XGS-PON Optical Line Terminations and Optical Network Units (ONUs), as well as the coexistence between various PON technologies, including G-PON and NG-PON2. Participating companies included ADTRAN, Broadcom, Calix, CommScope, Econet, Huawei, Intel, MT2, Nokia, Sagemcom, TiBit Communications and ZTE.

"Since we held the first Plugfest last year, momentum around PON has been growing and this second event underpins the wider activities being carried out," said Thierry Doligez, Director of LAN. "The industry is very much working together to ensure that when it comes to deploying PON technologies, operators have a wide choice of interoperable solutions and can deploy the technology cost-effectively."

All equipment vendors, FSAN and Broadband Forum members were able to improve the interoperability of their products by testing them against other solutions presented during the event. This was to the major satisfaction of the supporting operator members of these organizations, among which was Orange as a contributor to the test plan.

"Efficient interoperability testing and its next step ONU certification process is essential to Orange before envisioning any significant deployment of a technology generation," said Christian Gacon, Director of Wireline Network and Infrastructure at Orange Labs. "XG(S)-PON test events prove the basic standards sanity check and enable the next step consisting in common technical specifications amongst major operators worldwide to focus the industry towards a bulk first market for the technology."

For the Broadband Forum, the Plugfests are an extension of its PON interoperability activities, which include the BBF.247 G-PON and XG-PON1 ONU Certification program, which is being extended to include XGS-PON and NG-PON2. 

"The latest Plugfest further extended our work in the field of PON interoperability, addressing the need to secure both maturity of the ITU-T Recommendations and provide a migration path to operators," said Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum CEO. "The large number of engineers this Plugfest attracted, from an impressive breadth of companies, highlights that collaboration and standardization is incredibly important for the broadband industry as we move towards the next generation of fiber access."

For more information on the Broadband Forum's testing and certification, visit the Broadband Forum website at www.broadband-forum.org.

About the Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum, a non-profit industry organization, is focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks. Our work defines best practices for global networks, enables service and content delivery, establishes technology migration strategies, engineers critical device & service management tools, and is key to redefining broadband. Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at www.broadband-forum.org.

For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to http://www.broadband-forum.org or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information, please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or [email protected] or Jayne Brooks on +44 (0) 1636 704 888 or [email protected].

About the Full Service Access Network (FSAN)
The Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Group is a forum for the world's leading telecommunications services providers, independent test labs, and equipment suppliers to work towards a common goal of advancing broadband fiber access networks. The Mission of FSAN is to drive existing standards into services and products in the industry, while simultaneously advancing its own specifications into the appropriate standard bodies. FSAN currently has more than 70 member organisations, including more than 20 Network Operators, that represent the leading experts in Broadband PON (B-PON), Gigabit PON (G-PON), 10 Gigabit PON (XG-PON and XGS-PON), and Next Generation PON (NG-PON2) technologies.

For more information, please visit www.fsan.org.

About LAN (Laboratoire des Applications Numériques)
Subsidiary of the HF Company Group, the Laboratoire des Applications Numériques, located in France, is a unique private facility that operates as a third-party testing laboratory. It encompasses specialized resources and capabilities on the cutting edge of technology to perform a wide range of test services which revolve around compliance, interoperability, and coexistence of communication devices. LAN's team includes passionate PhDs, engineers, and technicians who focus on advanced technologies for communication networks especially DSL, G-PON, and PLC. Since its creation in 2001, LAN's purpose remains to facilitate the development of markets in three main fields, Access networks, Home area networks, and Smart grids. LAN has been selected and is accredited by major international organizations and alliances to develop and to maintain test and certification programs which help the industry for the growth of high quality mass markets based on standardized technologies.

For more information, please visit www.lanpark.eu or follow @Laboratoire_LAN on Twitter.

SOURCE Broadband Forum

Related Links

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