Industry's first XGS-PON Plugfest extends PON interoperability

TAUXIGNY, France, Dec. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Major companies from across the globe gathered at LAN's Digital Applications Laboratory in Tauxigny for the first XGS-PON Interop Plugfest, co-organized by the Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Group and the Broadband Forum. 

XGS-PON is based on the ITU-T's latest Recommendation (ITU-T G.9807.1), providing a symmetrical 10Gbit/s capability over a legacy fiber infrastructure that can co-exist with G-PON which is now dominating Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) deployments worldwide.

The event saw involvement from leading industry names: Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, ADTRAN, Broadcom, Calix, Econet, MT2 and Sagemcom, with more than 30 engineers attending with the aim of testing implementation and interoperability.

For the Broadband Forum, this Plugfest extends its work in the field of PON interoperability, building on its G-PON and XG-PON ONU Certification program, as an answer to the industry's increasing need to secure both maturity of the ITU-T Recommendations and provide a migration path to operators looking for next generation PONs.

"We're really pleased with the success of the Plugfest, in particular the number of engineers in attendance from an impressive breadth of companies," said Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum CEO. "As networks converge and technologies become increasingly dependent on each other to deliver a high-quality service, interoperability is essential. Working with LAN and FSAN on events such as the Plugfest is absolutely crucial to the Broadband Forum as we continue to look at the next generation of fiber access and build upon the success of our G-PON BBF.247 Certification program."

Philippe Lucas, SVP Strategy, Architecture & Standardization from Orange, said: "Orange is very pleased that the industry has been able to provide implementations in such a short time frame between the start of the standardization and the first Plugfest. "XGS-PON offers an evolution path within the PON infrastructure and covers a number of anticipated use cases beyond GPON. Interoperability Plugfests are considered a major achievement in assessing technology maturity, and that helps to bring confidence to operators before they consider any significant deployments."

Thierry Doligez, Director of LAN, added: "This Plugfest was one of our most successful events, involving the best of PON expertise from leading OLT, ONU, chipset and test tools manufacturers. During this very intensive week of tests, we observed significant positive results on interoperability between participants' solutions, which confirms the dynamism and the potential of this new XGS-PON technology."

For more information on the Broadband Forum's testing and certification, including BBF.247, visit the Broadband Forum website at www.broadband-forum.org.

About the Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum, a non-profit industry organization, is focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks. Our work defines best practices for global networks, enables service and content delivery, establishes technology migration strategies, engineers critical device & service management tools, and is key to redefining broadband. Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at www.broadband-forum.org.

For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to http://www.broadband-forum.org or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information, please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or brian.dolby@proactive-pr.com or Jayne Garfitt on +44 (0) 1636 812152 or jayne.garfitt@proactive-pr.com.

About the Full Service Access Network (FSAN)
The Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Group is a forum for the world's leading telecommunications services providers, independent test labs, and equipment suppliers to work towards a common goal of advancing broadband fiber access networks. The Mission of FSAN is to drive existing standards into services and products in the industry, while simultaneously advancing its own specifications into the appropriate standard bodies. FSAN currently has more than 70 member organisations, including more than 20 Network Operators, that represent the leading experts in Broadband PON (B-PON), Gigabit PON (G-PON), 10 Gigabit PON (XG-PON and XGS-PON), and Next Generation PON (NG-PON2) technologies.

For more information, please visit www.fsan.org

About LAN (Laboratoire des Applications Numériques)
Subsidiary of the HF Company Group, the Laboratoire des Applications Numériques, located in France, is a unique private facility that operates as a third-party testing laboratory. It encompasses specialized resources and capabilities on the cutting edge of technology to perform a wide range of test services which revolve around compliance, interoperability, and coexistence of communication devices. LAN's team includes passionate PhDs, engineers, and technicians who focus on advanced technologies for communication networks especially DSL, G-PON, and PLC. Since its creation in 2001, LAN's purpose remains to facilitate the development of markets in three main fields, Access networks, Home area networks, and Smart grids. LAN has been selected and is accredited by major international organizations and alliances to develop and to maintain test and certification programs which help the industry for the growth of high quality mass markets based on standardized technologies.

For more information, please visit www.lanpark.eu or follow @Laboratoire_LAN on Twitter.

SOURCE The Broadband Forum