Last mile of optical fiber

Although fiber-optic systems excel in high-bandwidth applications, optical fiber has been slow to achieve its goal of fiber to the premises or to solve the last mile problem. However, as bandwidth demand increases, more and more progress towards this goal can be observed. In Japan, for instance EPON has largely replaced DSL as a broadband Internet source. South Korea’s KT also provides a service called FTTH (Fiber To The Home), which provides 100 percent fiber-optic connections to the subscriber’s home.

The largest FTTH deployments are in Japan, Korea, and most recently in China. In the US, Verizon Communications provides a FTTH service called FiOS to select high-ARPU markets within their existing territory. The other major surving ILEC (AT&T) uses a FTTN (Fiber To The Node) service called U-verse with twisted-pair to the home. Their MSO competitors employ FTTN with coax using HFC. All of the major access networks use fiber for the bulk of the distance from the service provider's network to the customer.

The dominant access network technology globally is EPON. In Europe and among telcos in the United States BPON and GPON are favored because of their roots in the FSAN and ITU-T standards organizations under their control.

September 12, 2011

Continue