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Broadband and mobile giant Vodafone UK has today revealed a bit more information on their recent trial of 50G Passive Optical Network (50G PON) architecture, which was first hinted at yesterday during the soft launch of their new 8Gbps broadband package via their existing 10Gbps capable XGS-PON powered full fibre (FTTP) network.
A number of UK broadband operators have, in recently years, conducted very early trials of 50G PON technology, including ITS Technology (here), Openreach (here) and Netomnia (here) among others. In fact the latter has even launched a limited commercial solution for business customers. More recently CityFibre, which is one of the networks that supplies Vodafone, has even talked about deploying it by around 2032 (here).
At present most operators using Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines are already harnessing XGS-PON technology, where the ‘X’ stands for 10, the ‘G’ for Gigabits’, the ‘S’ for symmetric speed and PON means Passive Optical Network. In the real-world this tends to support advertised broadband speeds of up to around 7-8Gbps (overheads and other caveats make it difficult to deliver a clean 10Gbps).