Verizon touts successful NG-PON2 interoperability trial

Verizon has successfully completed what it believes is the first interoperability trial of next generation passive optical network, or NG-PON2, technology at its Verizon Labs location in Waltham, Massachusetts.

This trial demonstrated that equipment from different vendors on either end of a single fibre – at the service provider's endpoint and at the customer's endpoint – can be used to deliver service without impacting the end user. This breakthrough will provide increased flexibility and resiliency as well as the ability to meet customer needs more quickly, the company says.

The trial tested hardware aligned with Verizon's Open OMCI specifications, which define the optical networking unit (ONU) management and control interface. The operator plans to share the details with the industry in the next few months, it was announced in the press release.

Lack of interoperability between optical line terminal (OLT) equipment in the central office and ONUs in the customer premises has been a headache for companies deploying earlier-generation passive optical networking (PON) equipment.

Verizon is determined this will not be an issue its NG-PON2 roll-out. "This technology is the foundation for providing services that deliver multi-gigabit speeds,” said Dr. Denis Khotimsky, distinguished member of technical staff and Verizon's lead engineer on this trial.

Adtran and Ericsson (in partnership with Calix) provided the OLT equipment for the trial while Broadcom and Cortina Access provided reference designs for the ONU hardware.

The trial is an important step towards Verizon’s plan to implement NG-PON2 across its fibre access network, though no news about the final selection of suppliers was given (see Verizon evaluates suppliers ahead of NG-PON2 deployment). NG-PON2 technology supports up to 40G of total capacity and up to 10G speeds per customer, both upstream and downstream, over a single fibre.

Dr. Vincent O'Byrne, director of technology at Verizon, added: “Verizon and the participants in this trial are focused on establishing NG-PON2 as the industry's first PON standard that can be deployed in an interoperable fashion from day one.”