- Nokia upgraded its fiber line card to support 50G PON service
- 50G has seen limited deployments so far but Nokia expects enterprise adoption to pick up soon
- The vendor touts 50G supports “post-quantum” connectivity
Nokia said it’s offering operators a path to 50 Gbps PON speeds without costly network upgrades.
The vendor announced this week it integrated 50G PON into its existing fiber line card, allowing operators to choose between GPON, XGS-PON, 25G and now 50G while reusing the same hardware, said a Nokia spokesperson.
This means a provider that’s currently using XGS-PON and 25G for residential broadband can use that same line card to offer 50G PON connectivity for enterprise customers – even if 50G isn’t yet live on the network.
“Operators can deploy GPON and XGS today, but they are also ready for 50G from day one,” Nokia told Fierce. “So, when they need to activate 50G PON it can be done remotely and there is no need for technicians to visit the central office and perform additional tasks.”
50G PON deployments thus far have been limited to mostly trials, though Adtran and Netomnia in May announced the first U.K. commercial deployment. In the U.S., Nokia has trialed 50G with Frontier, Google Fiber and Hotwire Communications. ALLO and Brightspeed have tested the technology with Calix.
Also, Huawei a couple of years ago unveiled a 50G prototype targeted to enterprise customers that want to build Wi-Fi 7 campus networks.
“I believe previous demonstrations of 50 Gbps were on new, dedicated 50 Gbps line cards,” said Dell’Oro Group VP Jeff Heynen. Nokia’s news comes after the vendor in May released a 16-port line card designed for multi-gigabit residential broadband.
50G for the quantum era
The other feature Nokia’s touting is “post-quantum” enterprise connectivity. The spokesperson explained while PON’s existing security capabilities are “safe for current threats," enterprises must keep in mind that hackers can collect encrypted data and decrypt it once quantum computers are readily available.
“Our 50G PON solution has features that makes [networks] quantum resistant, that means strong cryptography, true random keys generated by hardware, secure out-of-band key exchange and frequent key renewals,” Nokia said.
According to Heynen, Nokia is talking up quantum because vendors will likely start marketing 50 Gbps as “the line rate that will be required to connect quantum-capable computers.”
Quantum tech is still in its infancy, but more than two dozen operators are experimenting with it, such as BT, Orange, Verizon and Telefonica.
“If you have an enterprise that will rely on quantum computing, then you will likely want the fastest connectivity to the cloud and the wider Internet,” Heynen added.
Nokia expects 50G PON deployments for enterprises to pick up in the next two years. Operators that mainly offer mass-market residential broadband will likely stick with XGS-PON and 25G until the end of the decade.
The vendor also noted its line card will be capable of deploying symmetrical 50G once that becomes available on the market. But symmetrical gets tough on the 50G level, as Heynen previously told Fierce, because wavelengths sit closer to each other on the spectrum band and equipment makers are still working on tech to keep the uplink separate from the downlink.