TECHNICAL
XGS-PON rollouts in these areas can serve policy objectives of providing world- class broadband for all and can ensure that there are no in-country disparities in the quality of broadband access between rural and urban areas. XGS-PON and sustainability Energy consumption has become one of the important considerations for operators as they support sustainable connectivity and bandwidth growth. Adopting energy-efficient PON technologies is crucial for operators as they seek to lower operational expenses, reduce their carbon footprint, and meet any regulatory guidelines and requirements.
An XGS-PON OLT provides 4× faster downstream speeds than a GPON OLT, while its power consumption is only 2.2× greater than GPON for those with fewer than 32 PON ports and 1.7× greater for those with more than 32 PON ports, based on the European Commission’s “Broadband Communication Equipment Codes of Conduct.” The bottom line is that XGS-PON supports more bandwidth without the same growth rate in energy consumption.
mobile transport applications. This is important because it can deliver operational expenditure savings. Wholesale strategies and network efficiency Several national governments have implemented wholesale FTTP network builds. This wholesale network approach promotes fibre deployment efficiencies since a premise is passed just once by fibre, and multiple fibre passings are eliminated. These national wholesalers then partner with multiple retailers, enabling a range of offerings to end users. Such government-backed rollouts are often targeted in more rural areas where commercial FTTP rollout is not viable.
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Brief case studies
Residential
AT&T AT&T announced expansion of its “hyper- gig” fibre offering in March 2022. AT&T increased its highest-speed service tier to 5Gbps across parts of its footprint. According to the operator, multigigabit speeds meet the growing bandwidth demands from the home, “similar to freeways with several high-speed lanes, multigig speeds open those lanes for various connected devices to run at their fastest possible speed.” The success of AT&T’s strategy is demonstrated by the fact that it is consistently growing its FTTP subscription base by more than 200,000 subscriptions every quarter. Moreover, the operator had achieved an FTTP subscription take-up rate of 38% at end-1Q23. NBI NBI is delivering high-speed broadband services to homes, businesses, farms, and schools in rural areas in Ireland as part of the government’s National Broadband Plan. NBI is a wholesale- only provider and has onboarded 51 retail service providers that are selling services as of June 2023. Some retailers offer multigigabit services. NBI’s initial deployment of XGS-PON has helped it to rapidly increase the entry-level speeds included in its wholesale offers to 500Mbps.
KPN KPN, the incumbent in the Netherlands, launched XGS-PON in September 2021. KPN offers maximum download and upload speeds of 1Gbps. These symmetrical speeds can be an important differentiator against cable operator VodafoneZiggo, which offers maximum upload speeds of only 75Mbps. KPN was able to seamlessly upgrade its existing GPON FTTP network to XGS-PON without requiring any modifications to the fibre outside plant. An indication of the success of KPN’s deployment is that it achieved year-on-year growth in fibre broadband service revenue of 10% in 1Q23. Frontier Frontier has adopted a multi-use strategy using XGS-PON, enabling multigigabit service offerings to residential and business customers throughout 25 states. Frontier cited 19% fibre revenue growth in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector in 1Q23, following 15% growth in 4Q22. Frontier has been able to grow its SME subscription base and revenue through its XGS-PON deployment strategy.
Frontier In January 2023, Frontier, a large US operator, announced its networkwide 5Gb fibre internet service, highlighting the 125× faster upload speeds, 5× faster download speeds, and 2.5× lower latency than cable. Frontier has promoted itself as the “un-cable” operator that ranks as the operator with the fastest upload speeds in the US. Frontier’s consumer strategy is based on delivering customer experiences unmatched by competitors such as cable operators. A measure of the growing momentum behind Frontier’s strategy is that the operator added a record 87,000 fibre subscriptions in 1Q23. Moreover, Frontier noted in May 2023 that 55% of its fibre subscription acquisitions were for gigabit and multigigabit speeds.
Wholesale and multi-use
Chorus Chorus is a wholesale-only operator of fibre broadband infrastructure in New Zealand. XGS-PON has enabled Chorus to support differentiated services, such as HyperFibre 2000, HyperFibre 4000, and HyperFibre 8000, to its retail service provider customers. Chorus’s wholesale offers are used by retailers to supply residential and enterprise subscribers. Its 1Gbps, 2Gbps, 4Gbps, and 8Gbps offers accounted for 33% of residential fibre adds in 2H22.
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Volume 46 No.2 MAY 2024
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