Swisscom starts live test of 50G PON on fibre network

From the press:

Swisscom has connected a field test of 50G PON technology for the fibre-optic network. The Swiss operator said the live test in a Swiss municipality is a world first. It already tested the technology in a laboratory environment in 2020. Swisscom plans to deploy the 50G PON technology by 2025 at the latest.

A bit more blurb here:

https://www.swisscom.ch/en/about/news/2022/07/11-neu...

Excellent news. Obviously excessive for home use but this will be ideal for backhauling dense mobile cells and indeed providing a full, symmetrical 10G to businesses and vanity tier home users.

No reason why they can't go to symmetrical 20 indeed.

Good as XGSPON is it is not capable of 10G. See what service tier is the 'new gigabit' by 2025

Yeah. Good for the Swiss.

I think this shows the inherent flexibility in a point-to-point dark fibre wholesale network concept: it’s able to adapt equally well at a retail ISP level from a PON delivery model be that any combination of GPON/XGS-PON/25 or 50GPON whilst simultaneously allowing quite small, niche operators to leverage the same infrastructure, like init7, with their direct to
premises 1/10/25G Ethernet offerings.

Couldn't agree more. It's unfortunate that Openreach / BT Group never seriously considered anything other than bitstream access. It would've killed off any prospect of competing access networks while allowing for all the benefits.

PON made sense at the time but with PIA in the mix I think it was the wrong decision for all involved.

Could openreach upgrade to this in years to come utilising the same fibre in the ductwork:?

IE replace equipment at each end of the fibre?

Yes. And they can run this in parallel with existing GPON, over the same fibres, and can have a mixture of customers on the same splitters.

Sounds like we are well future proofed then!

Yep. The only grumble Tasty Poultry guy and myself had is that ISPs are at the mercy of Openreach's commercial business case so can offer the products Openreach wish to sell them: GPON only for now, highly asymmetrical.

Swisscom use PON for their services to reduce optics count but lease dark fibre for £10-15 a month to other operators. The other operators can use a PON technology themselves or the Init7 way and run point to point straight to switches.

Point to point optics are pretty cheap. Even 25G BiDi optics are £150 for both sides of the link and 10G half that.

The fibre itself is future proofed however it seems unlikely that Openreach will be on the bleeding edge. They were for G.fast however that was to try and avoid investing in full fibre. It's very much in their interests to sweat GPON for as long as possible, and likely when they do release XGSPON the tiers won't be symmetrical.

😂😎

Meanwhile stateside: AT&T claims first with 20 Gbps symmetric speeds in production network

AT&T said it reached 20 Gbps symmetric speeds in its production network, claiming it's the first operator in the world to achieve this milestone. AT&T Labs began evaluating next-generation 25GS-PON technology in its production network in June. This expands capacity by almost 2.5x compared to XGS-PON while requiring minimal infrastructure upgrades in central offices and customer locations.

Bold but incorrect claim. Might be the fastest production net in the states, but as we know certainly not the world, nether for PON or point-2-point.