Technology Strategies for Municipal Fiber Broadband

Despite the tremendous innovation in fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks over the last decade, growing bandwidth demands from households and enterprise business applications are likely to exceed today’s Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) network capacity levels in the near future. Network traffic is expected to grow by an order of magnitude over the coming decade, in part because more high-bandwidth applications will become commonplace. Next-generation 10 Gbps PON network architectures offer the ability to support current service needs and scale economically as needed to address multigigabit bandwidth demands well into the future. The primary value of 10G technologies lies in capacity. For a municipal utility looking to better manage smart-grid applications through communications network advancements, a next-gen 10G network architecture offers an optimal path to servicing public power demands and providing symmetrical 10 Gbps service for residential subscribers, business customers and mobile backhaul services, all over a single, common infrastructure.