AMSTERDAM -- GreenTouch™, the global consortium dedicated to dramatically improving the energy efficiency of information and communications technology (ICT) networks by a factor of 1,000, today will announce and demonstrate a new technology that will dramatically reduce energy consumption in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, as well as other applications. The breakthrough Bit-Interleaved Passive Optical Network (Bi-PON) technology is the second major milestone reached by the consortium. When deployed, it will enable a power reduction of 30 times over current technologies while improving performance and reducing cost.

The access network is a significant contributor to the total power consumption of the overall communications infrastructure, and GreenTouch determined that finding new ways to improve its energy efficiency was a top priority. FTTH is expected to nearly double over the next five years, reaching 142 million subscribers worldwide by 2016, according to ABI Research. With Bi-PON instead of the current optical technology in use, the impact on the carbon footprint is that of taking half a million cars from the roads.

GreenTouch member companies imec, a world-leading research organization in nano-electronics and nano-technology; INRIA, a French public research body dedicated to computational sciences; Orange Labs, the research and development centre of France Telecom-Orange, one of the world's leading telecommunications operators; and Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, will participate in today's worldwide demonstration event.

Green Touch