Successful demo paves way for adding bandwidth more easily and combining business, backhaul and residential services on access fiber.

May 23, 2017

3 Min Read
Calix Touts Channel Bonding for NG-PON2

Calix today is announcing a successful demonstration of channel bonding on its NG-PON2 technology to deliver 40 Gbit/s of symmetrical service on a single fiber in an access network. The key value of this approach is to enable network operators to deliver business, residential, multi-dwelling unit and wireless backhaul services over a single fiber infrastructure.

The demonstration was sought by Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), with whom Calix Inc. (NYSE: CALX) is already working in NG-PON2 trials, says Geoff Burke, senior director of corporate marketing, in an interview. By using the Calix AXOS software-driven access system to bond multiple NG-PON2 wavelengths, Calix didn't have to make hardware changes, which enabled it to meet Verizon's request in 12 days, he says. (See Verizon Proves NG-PON2 Interoperability, Next-Gen Calix OLT Gives Verizon an Edge and Verizon Readies Landmark NG-PON2 Trial.)

"It is exciting to be able to not only conceive of these things but bring them to reality very rapidly," Burke says. Calix has been demonstrating NG-PON2 in multiple networks already, and is expecting that technology to be deployed before the end of 2017. "The bonding is something that would come right afterward; it's a matter of identifying the company that will be the lead deployer of that."

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The wavelength combination for NG-PON2 is similar to what happens in the DSL world, he adds. Individual wavelengths are brought together to support up to 40 Gbit/s of symmetrical throughput. This is actually also the only way to deliver a true 10Gbit/s business service, Burke says, because a single wavelength of 10 Gbit/s loses some of that capacity to overhead.

But the real value of combining wavelengths is the ability to support high-speed business services, residential services bundles, 5G backhaul and transport to MDUs all on the same fiber access network. That simplifies the architecture and makes for more efficient fiber investments, Burke says.

"What you would have to do if you weren't utilizing this technology? You would have to have more dedicated fibers, and you would have to lay those fibers, roll the trucks, and have a service outage, a maintenance window -- this is a more efficient, more effective way to deliver more bandwidth."

G.fast, a higher-bandwidth copper option, is being used to deliver more bandwidth within these larger buildings but will require a fatter conduit to and from the network, he notes.

"For someone like Verizon, where they historically had separate networks for residential, business services and wireless operations, they now can combine this into one network that ultimately turns up and down different lambdas based on need and opportunity," Burke says. "As you can imagine, there are other advantages as well, one of which is redundancy. You can move from one lambda to another or add bandwidth on the fly completely without a maintenance window."

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading

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