Fiber-to-the-X or FTTx is the new Face of Fiber Optic Communications Industry
Let me first share with you these amazing facts on fiber optic communications technology.
According to Corning, one of the world’s leading innovators in specialty glasses, ceramics, and optical physics, “optical fiber can transmit 15.5 terabits of data per second over a distance of 7,000 kilometers. When translated, it would take approximately 25 seconds to send the entire iTunes catalogue from the sunny beaches of Florida to the bustling streets of London.”
According to a professor from University of Texas Dallas, “a 10 Gbps signal has the ability to transmit any of the following per second: 1000 books, 130,000 voice channels, 16 HDTV channels, 100 HDTV channels using compression techniques.”
According to a 2011 research article published by the New Scientist, an online tech magazine, “two separate researches… set a world record by sending more than 100 terabits of information per second through a single optical fiber. That's enough to deliver three solid months of HD video or the contents of 250 double-sided Blu-ray discs.”
FTTH Providers and Consumers Landscape
The trends in fiber optic communications are revolving around the FTTH broadband network architecture. More and more companies are engaging in this business while millions of consumers are enjoying the lightning speed of internet browsing, video-on-demand, VoIP, and cloud for home and business services. Countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore are among of the early implementers of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) in the Asian region.
According to Infonetics Research, at present, 66% of global subscribers receive broadband services via copper-based technologies while remaining 34% are via FTTH. The 66% comprises the DSL, VDSL (stands for Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line) and G.fast - a new DSL providing up to 52 Mbps downstream and 16 Mbps upstream - landscape. The 34% comprises the more than 1 million FTTH consumers in the US, more than 6 million in Japan, and over 10 million in the rest of world.
In the U.S., Verizon is one of the leading providers of FTTH. Other well-known companies that provide FTTH services are UTOPIA, Wilson Utilities and AT&T.
The FTTx Equipment Market
Another interesting face of the fiber optic communications is the FTTx equipment manufacturers’ landscape. According to analysts from TechNavio, a London-based technology research and advisory company, the global FTTx equipment market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15.54% over the period 2012-2016. Currently, the key vendors dominating the FTTx market are Fiberhome Networks, Huawei Technologies, Mitsubishi, ZTE, Alacatel-Lucent, NEC and Ericsson.
The current FTTx market is a little bit complicated to understand as it includes Fiber-to-the-Home and Fiber-to-the-Building (FTTH and FTTB), VDSL consisting of Fiber-to-the-Node+VDSL and VDSL2 technologies, and several other FTTx architectures such as PON, Active Ethernet, and RF over Glass (RFoG). Business analysts referred to companies offering such diverse broadband network services as Multiple System Operators (MSO).
To have a good grasp of this complex market, let’s understand more how fiber optic communications works in FTTx systems.
Active Optical Network (AON)
AON uses electrically-powered devices as Optical Network Terminal (ONT). This ONT converts the optical signal coming from the optical transmitter to electrical signal and back again to optical signal. Optical ethernet routers and switches then distribute the optical signal to ONT units in the homes and buildings.
Passive Optical Network (PON)
PON uses unpowered optical splitters as ONT. These optical splitters may use optical amplifiers to boost the optical signal degraded by fiber attenuation and distortion. Since there’s no optical to electrical signal conversion process, the optical fiber line coming from the transmitter are split and directly distributed to ONT units in the homes and buildings.
Depending on the network architecture, FTTx system implementation can cost an MSO company millions to billions of dollars in total investment. Bringing fiber networks to the homes and buildings therefore requires strategic planning and collaboration between equipment manufacturers and service providers. OEM companies like NEC, for example, has very broad line up of fiber optic communications products and solutions for backbone, metro and access networks which FTTx providers can leverage to bring fibers to the homes and businesses in the most economical way.
We’ve seen how the telecommunication industry transformed over the past decades. Fiber optics communication has been revolutionizing people and machines connectivity and with on-going research and developments, what’s about to come in near future is an insurmountable, unimaginable internet speed.
