"With GPON, you have standardized voice carriage like a Sonet or TDM link, with clocking guaranteed," he says. Carriers can save up to 50 percent on up-front capital costs using GPON links instead of Sonet OC48 (2.5 Gbit/s) rings, Lee claims. And the passive nature of a GPON ensures ongoing operational savings.
That kind of cost model is likely to be music to the ears of fiber-hungry carriers, if it can be proven out. Even EPON proponents, like Alloptic, acknowledge that for businesses where GFP is usually required to handle a variety of data traffic such as Sonet, Frame Relay ATM, voice, and Ethernet, GPON might be the most efficient choice, provided it was running at 2.5 Gbit/s or higher.
But cost is everything in PON, which explains why some vendors haven't run out to add a GPON to their BPONs just yet. A spokesman for Terawave Communications, for instance, says his company will wait till the standard solidifies and component costs are driven down, probably 2004, to release product.
Ditto others. "At the present time the world's largest carriers, represented by the FSAN membership, have chosen to deploy BPON, by and large," writes Jeff Gwynne, senior VP of marketing and business development at Quantum Bridge Communications Inc. If demand goes up and costs drop, that could make the cost of GPON implementation more attractive, he says.
Mary Jander, Senior Editor, Light Reading
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