nbn, the company overseeing the construction of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), has partnered with Nokia to trial NG-PON2 technology, in a move which it has claimed could help it eventually deliver symmetrical speeds of 10Gbps in areas served by its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure. Further, nbn has suggested that a future deployment of NG-PON2 could also benefit end users connected to retail services over its fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) and fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) networks – through new technologies such as G.fast or XG.FAST – and could provide extra capacity in the fibre to support the company’s HFC and fixed-wireless networks.
The trials, which were carried out in Melbourne, reportedly achieved aggregate broadband speeds of 102Gbps on a single fibre. Nokia confirmed that nbn has trialled several different PON technologies using the vendor’s universal next generation PON solution, including: Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexing (TWDM-PON) with 40Gbps symmetrical; XGS-PON with 10Gbps symmetrical; and GPON with 2.5Gbps.
Commenting on the development, nbn’s Chief Technology Officer, Dennis Steiger, said: ‘With more than two million homes now receiving services from their chosen retailer over the nbn network and nearly five million able to order a retail service, the rollout is continuing at pace while we also have a very sharp focus on the future … The NG-PON2 trials we have conducted with Nokia have shown us the huge potential this very exciting technology has in terms of helping us deliver on future consumer demand for data at speed.’
nbn currently offers wholesale maximum speeds of up to 1Gbps to retail service providers and expects its GPON-based FTTP network will be available to around 2.5 million premises by 2020.