Is GPON the Best PON Technology?
Ultimately, for a unified, low-cost network, all services will converge to IP delivered via Ethernet. The question is: how do you get there while supporting current legacy services? The answer in the optical access network is GPON. Only GPON enables service providers to migrate their legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology to 100 percent Ethernet. Conversely, with EPON as the optical access technology, the decision is immediate — all services must be Ethernet. Even with TDM circuit emulation service (CES), GPON still offers significantly better transmission performance over EPON because of its PON — level quality of service (QoS) capabilities2. As with broadband PON (BPON), the comprehensive nature of the ITU-T G.984 GPON standard provides the means for industry-wide interoperability of optical components, chips, and equipment. The global success of digital subscriber line (DSL) can be attributed to interoperability because it enabled low
