Telecom equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent will launch a new broadband optical fiber access solution for cable multiple-system operators (MSOs).
The Ethernet Passive Optical Networking or EPON, solution can be integrated into existing cable access networks to deliver greater capacity to more businesses at a lower cost. This will enable MSOs, particularly those in North America, to expand their service offerings to meet the growing data bandwidth needs of businesses.
Bright House Networks, the sixth largest owner and operator of cable systems in the United States has selected Alcatel-Lucent’s EPON solution for its commercial services network, said Alcatel-Lucent in a statement.
“Compared with competing alternatives, EPON has clear advantages in capital efficiency, vendor interoperability, bandwidth scalability and standardized provisioning,” said Craig Cowden, SVP, Network Engineering/Operations & Enterprise Solutions, Bright House Networks.
North American businesses are estimated to spend over $140 billion per year in total on communications services, yet MSOs are currently only capturing a small percentage of this market.
“The business communications market segment is growing rapidly and cable operators in North America have a real opportunity to address it,” said Federico Guillen, head of Alcatel-Lucent Fixed Networks.
Revenue from fixed broadband services providing connections between 100 megabits-per-second (100Mbps) and 1 gigabit-per-second (1G) is predicted to more than double between 2013 and 2017.
Alcatel-Lucent’s new EPON solution will help MSOs meet this demand more cost-effectively, allowing them to capture a far greater share of the growing business services market.
Alcatel-Lucent’s EPON solution for MSOsis based on the highest capacity fiber platform on the market – the Alcatel-Lucent 7360 ISAM FX with 1G EPON and 10G EPON linecards.
The solution supports DOCSIS provisioning of EPON (DPoE), EPON Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) Optical Network Units (ONU), and a 10G EPON ONU. This enables it to integrate smoothly with existing networks, provisioning systems, and customer premises equipment, allowing MSOs to provision new services.
EPON delivers more bandwidth (up to 1G or 10G upload and download speeds) than today’s DOCSIS networks and supports three to four times the number of customers per fiber as existing point-to-point coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) solutions.
