Nokia continued its march toward the next generation of fiber technology, announcing it trialed 25G PON technology with Telefonica in Spain – a first for 25G PON deployment in the country.
This technology, which can coexist with XGS-PON and GPON on the same fiber network, would allow Telefonica to introduce symmetrical speeds of 20 Gbps to its 60 million fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) footprint. Telefonica, a major proponent of fiber rollouts in Spain, said the upgraded bandwidth will give its customers the opportunity to tap into the Metaverse and other virtual reality applications.
“Telefonica was the first operator in Spain to provide gigabit connectivity, but we are not stopping there,” stated Gonzalo Garzón, head of fixed access at Telefonica Espana. “New FTTH technologies give us even more opportunities than home connectivity. With their massive uptick in capacity we’ll be able to offer new business services on the same network.”
According to Nokia, its 25G PON solution can support symmetrical speeds of 25 Gbps as well as asymmetrical bitrates of 25/10 Gbps, depending on the optics chosen. The technology, built on Nokia’s Quillion chipset, also incorporates the vendor’s Lightspan and ISAM access nodes.
“This 25G PON proof of concept with Telefonica has demonstrated that the huge bandwidth-capacity can be easily added to their existing networks, co-existing with their existing PON technologies,” added Bjorn Capens, Nokia’s VP of fixed networks in Europe. “This means customers on the same fiber line can be served with GPON, XGS-PON or 25G GPON, making it much easier to manage upgrade cycles.”
Nokia in the past year has partnered with several providers to test and deploy 25G PON. In Europe, the vendor recently trialed the technology in the U.K., the Netherlands and Croatia. And last summer, Nokia helped Tennessee-based operator EPB launch the first community-wide 25 Gbps network in the U.S.
While passive optical networking spend is on the rise in the EMEA region, U.S. providers are spending more on cable broadband equipment, per a Dell’Oro report from December. Specifically, PON accounted for 54% of Q3 broadband equipment spending in EMEA. In the U.S., only 38% of broadband equipment revenue came from optical networking and other fiber gear.
A few operators are working on 25G in the U.S., including Frontier Communications – which has also shown interest in Nokia’s new 100G-capable optical line terminal – and AT&T.
Eddy Barker, AT&T’s AVP of Mobility and Access Architecture, told Fierce last June he expects other vendors aside from Nokia to announce 25G capabilities in 2023, but that mainstream commercial rollouts likely won’t happen until 2024.