Yankee Group: GPON or EP2P: Choosing an FTTH Architecture

Executive Summary

Choosing a Fiber to the Home (FTTH) technology solution is no simple matter. The stakes are considerable and the investment is supposed to drive the next 40 years of revenue or more. Vendor arguments often devolve into something akin to religious war, and as a consequence, service providers risk making their decisions on the basis of arguments that are either exaggerated or not relevant to their particular situation. This report aims to analyze the arguments for two technology choices, Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) and Ethernet Point to Point (EP2P), by examining deployment scenarios and the issues around those scenarios’ implied topology choices.

Deployment of FTTH in Asia is already well on its way, and the technology of choice there is Ethernet passive optical network (EPON). In European and North American markets, where FTTH is becoming a reality, the choice is really between GPON and EP2P (see Exhibit 1).

Keywords

GPON, EP2P, FTTH, architecture

Pages
Publish Date & Author(s)

by Benoît Felten, Principal Analyst
13 pages
December 2009