The solutions that enable providers to deploy and sell complete and scalable services will win. In either case, an optical access infrastructure will be critical to carrier survivability and growth, and PON will be an essential element of the strategy. Frank J. Effenberger is director of system engineering for Quantum Bridge Communications. Cecil Christie Cisco Systems Demand for bandwith-intensive applications such as dynamic, streaming content from residential and small business customers continues to escalate, forcing service providers to seek new ways to keep up. One solution is to deliver fiber access, which offers the promise of bandwidth abundance.
PONs are a step in the right direction.
However, PONs only deliver the optical transport. Additional technologies must be overlaid on PONs for full-service delivery. While the technology choice of ATM or Ethernet as a transport over PONs is important, the bigger question is the impact of that choice on IP-based services running on the network. APONs also suffer from framing overhead that further reduces bandwidth in a shared environment. Adding new customers compromises guarantees given to existing customer applications, if the PON bandwith is already fully subscribed.