FTTP Will Retain Spotlight at SUPERCOMM 2004

BellSouth, SBC and Verizon whipped the vendor community into a frenzy just before last year’s SUPERCOMM when the threesome announced plans for a joint RFP on PON-based FTTP. Although SBC and Verizon announced their first rounds of resulting vendors last year, FTTP is expected to again be a focal point at this year’s SUPERCOMM, as FTTP vendors enhance existing products, and outside plant suppliers highlight new solutions to help both the RBOCs and other service providers such as independent telcos and carriers abroad better manage and maintain FTTP networks.

PON revenue surged 240 percent from 2002 to 2003, reaching $182 million, according to Infonetics Research. “PON is growing rapidly in Asia Pacific, especially Japan, where hundreds of thousands of subscribers are using ePON and aPON,” says Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research. “PON is slowly lifting off in North America, mostly in new home builds and in neighborhoods where the copper plant is being rehabilitated.We expect PON to continue expanding rapidly through 2007.”

At SUPERCOMM, Alcatel — which SBC has selected as its key FTTP vendor — will announce release 2.0 of the Alcatel 7340 FTTU solution. The product consists of PON-based elements, including gear for the central office, and business and home terminals. With the new release, which is actually the third release of the product, Alcatel adds new features that Sayeed Rashid, senior marketing manager at Alcatel, says make FTTP more suitable for mass deployment: more upstream interfaces such as gigabit Ethernet, increased switch fabric capacity so any accessside interface can go up to 600mbps, and a way to do interactive TV without requiring a change to inhome wiring. Also at the show, Alcatel will do a live interoperability demonstration with long-time partner Scientific-Atlanta, which sells a variety of TV gear including head-end infrastructure and settop boxes.

“What we expect to see at SUPERCOMM is more reinforcement of the trend of FTTP,” says Rashid. “Expect to see more vendors getting into the game with more FTTP solutions. You’ll also see an effort to globalize FTTP.” He notes that Japan has led deployment in this area with 600,000 FTTP customers, while in North America there are less than 200,000 homes passed with FTTP and less than 100,000 actual FTTP subscribers. “But because of the JPC of the RBOC, the excitement has been tremendous,” around FTTP in the North America, says Rashid, referring to the three RBOCs’ joint procurement committee formed to seek FTTP equipment bids last year. “There are about 94 FTTP deployments in the U.S.,” he adds, “a good number of which are small rural IOCs,” and several of which are builds by local governments.

Also in the FTTP realm at SUPERCOMM, ADC will take the wraps off a new line of fiber distribution terminals designed specifically for FTTP deployments. The line of new cabinets consists of six models serving between 144 and 1,152 homes, depending upon the model. The new equipment will offer 1x16 and 1x42 splitter configurations, and other configuration options by request. It has an area called a “parking lot” for unused fiber; internal cable management; and room for WDM equipment.

“The cabinets allow service providers to defer capex spending to more fully use active electronics in the CO, so they can add splitters as capacity needs increase,” says Tom Kampf, director of fiber infrastructure solutions at ADC.

Kampf expects FTTP to be a key focus at this year’s SUPERCOMM show in Chicago, with “a lot of new concepts for FTTH and how to defer or reduce costs with that.” In addition to outside plant cabinetry, he says, SUPERCOMM might turn up some advances in fiber trenching. In fact, SBC executives giving an FTTP presentation at the recent OFC show in Los Angeles called on the vendor community to deliver new and improved trenching techniques for fiber.

Also at OFC, Corning came out with new outside plant devices and fiber cable designed for FTTU installations.