The current extraordinary situation surprised almost every sector of the economy. Telecommunication operators and content providers were not an exception in this case. The campaign “# stay at home” caused that people locked themselves in their apartments in front of computers, telephones, and TV monitors despite the good weather. As a result, overloaded international OTT video services decreased quality to protect subscribers, but Polish VoD and OTT services did not follow suit.
The last few days have been the biggest stress test for access networks since the previous decade. It has also been a time of reflection for operators to meet subscribers’ expectations regarding the issue of emergency and stability. It might seem that operators offering “unlimited” internet access via LTE network are in the worst situation. Homeoffice means an enormous appetite for a transfer, especially when kids are also learning online. An average subscriber pays more attention to eventual delays or packet loss when using videoconferences or VPN. For fixed-line operators, this is an opportunity to attract those disappointed with the mobile internet. We decided to check not the mobile internet but the fiber-optic internet. The need to migrate towards XGS-PON, a solution that offers the approx. speed 10Gbit has been stated for some time. Thus, we asked 5 FTTH network operators from different parts of Poland for the results of the burden on GPON ports from the last two weeks ( 3-17th March 2020). On average, all operators noticed an increase in Internet usage by almost 30%.
Results:
1. Port OLT, active number of ONTs – 48
Downstream:
2. Port OLT, active number of ONTs – 38
Downstream:
3. Port OLT, active number of ONTs – 75
Downstream:
4. Port OLT, active number of ONTs – 86
Downstream:
It is interesting to note that the upstream is not significantly visible despite working at home or children playing inside. The downstream shows more dense/ continuous use than previous more striking fluctuations that become more round now. The differences in use may vary from operators primarly due to the type of television services (multicast, unicast or OTT) and the penetration of these services The operators providing TV in multicast or broadcast technology are in a much better position. Some decoded selected and popular TV channels during the epidemic, distracting subscribers from consuming the internet or using external OTT services, relieving the infrastructure.
In the case of GPON networks, it is surprising that the use of telecommunications infrastructure is so low. Some operators point out that the speed limit is not GPON, but WiFi, which slows down subscribers despite having faster tariffs. Sometimes, the subscriber has 500Mbs and ONT with a 300Mbit WiFi module (2.4GHz n). As a producer of GPON ONT solutions, we noticed a high interest in replacing the old type of subscriber equipment for the new one, as it has better WiFi and works in the new standards. Only one issue remains open, which is replacing equipment in the subscriber’s house, preferably by the subscriber. To this end, we are preparing a set of video guides for the operators and subscribers.
GPON technology is not the bottleneck in access to the Internet; despite the increased bandwidth consumption in recent years, there is still much space. But it does not mean that fiber optic operators can sleep peacefully. Subscribers will pay more attention to the quality of connections to critical services, for example, to Skype, videoconferencing, corporate VPN, or the issue of delays while playing.
Statistics do not reflect all cases. A few operators recently reported the need to test XGS-PON products in selected localizations because of the high bandwidth consumption and demand from business customers. In 2019 we provided XGS-PON as the aggregation solution for the wireless stations. For this reason, we expect a higher interest in XGS-PON solutions, especially from businesses (Passive Optical LAN) and telecommunication operators in terms of convergence of mobile services and enterprises based access infrastructure. The use of XGS-PON for individual customers will increase with falling prices.
