NetworkX: The debate over 25G PON continues

10/27/2023, Fiber Optic Online News, Lightreading reported that the competition between 25G PON and 50G PON has resurfaced at the Network X conference held in Paris recently. Although Nokia and Google Fiber still insist on favoring 25G PON, more operators are still hesitant to choose between 25G PON and 50G PON. Iain Morris, editor of Lightreading, commented on this.

Compared to the current 10G PON or XGS PON, 25G PON is an evolution of broadband technology development. The viewpoint of its supporter Nokia is that once you lay out the fiber optic cable, you can directly upgrade without the need to dig new trenches or replace the fiber optic cable. This is a soft upgrade that only requires replacing the terminal device. Of course, there is still debate about the standards for the next generation PON. Opponents believe that the current 10G PON is sufficient, and we only need to wait for the 50G PON and its applications to mature. Calix even mocked that ITU has not officially approved the 25G PON standard yet. Nokia has only organized a group of companies to participate, and is a dominant company that plays a controlling role in it. Of course, Nokia has now found support from Google, and Google Fiber is ready for home deployment. Previously, it was only used for 5G backhaul and some commercial applications. It sounds a bit strange to have a 25G PON at home, after all, we don't need that high bandwidth now. My own 70M bandwidth at home is sufficient for Netfilx. Opponents may say that we don't know what the future holds, and VR/AR may arrive home. Some people also say that some may be willing to pay a little more for higher quality connections, after all, it's not a large-scale deployment. Google Fiber is not as widely deployed as people imagine, it is just an experimental nature to test what broadband can bring to us. Their plan is to have tens of thousands of customers without discussing further goals. Perhaps the reason why they are so high-profile is just to give the industry more stimulation. I have asked them multiple times, and they only mentioned that there may be tens of thousands of family customers, 10 platforms, and 20 regional markets in the next 28 years. There is not much clear information in the news on Google Fiber, and now Nokia is clearly hoping to drive this progress. I used to be a supporter of copper broadband, after all, many times bandwidth is already sufficient. But in recent years, with high-definition television and more people playing games at home, bandwidth consumption has been increasing. For example, in the UK, the monthly bandwidth consumption is astonishing at over 500GB. This was unimaginable before.