Verizon Seeks Multi-Vendor NG-PON2 Nirvana

Verizon has put its full weight behind efforts to create an interoperable, multi-vendor NG-PON2 technology market by conducting an interop test that included two optical line terminal (OLT) vendors -- ADTRAN and Calix (with partner Ericsson) -- and two optical network terminal (ONT) vendors in the form of chip vendors Broadcom and Cortina.

The aim? Enable a next-gen optical access market that has multi-vendor interoperability from day one. And to help push that along, Verizon says it's going to share the specifications that define the OLT-to-ONT interface in the next few months.

You can read the full details of Verizon's interop tests by checking out this article written by my colleague Mari Silbey: Verizon Proves NG-PON2 Interoperability.

And why is Verizon keen to move this forward? Vincent O'Byrne, director of technology at Verizon Communications, talked to me about that very topic during the recent Broadband World Forum event in London:

We're going to be hearing a lot about NG-PON2 in 2017 as FTTH/B heads towards the next generation of technology deployments. There are multiple operators moving ahead with various trials as we learned towards the end of last year:

• Why Ucom Is Checking Out NG-PON2
  
• Why AT&T Has NG-PON2 on Its Roadmap

And we heard more about NG-PON2 developments in the UBB2020 radio show that was hosted earlier today: 2017: The Year of NG-PON2.

Watch out for more coverage of this topic in the coming months.

— Ray Le Maistre, , Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading