Verizon names GPON vendors

Verizon Communications named its chosen suppliers of gigabit passive optical networking equipment today: Alcatel, Motorola and Tellabs.

UBS Investment Research predicted that very selection last week.

Tellabs is the primary supplier of Verizon's current PON deployment. Motorola is its secondary PON supplier. And Alcatel is AT&T's chosen PON supplier, though AT&T is expected to pick its own GPON suppliers shortly.

Verizon will deploy Alcatel's gear first, starting later this year, making Verizon the first Bell company to commercially deploy GPON. In its quarterly earnings call this morning, analysts asked if Tellabs' timetable for production of GPON gear--which trailed Alcatel's as well as Verizon's stated preferences--could cause Tellabs to miss out on early deployment opportunities. But Tellabs CEO Krish Prabhu dismissed the idea, declining to speculate much further, since Verizon had not yet publicly announced its decision. Tellabs expects Verizon to begin lab-trialing its GPON gear in this year's fourth quarter and start deploying it in the first quarter of 2007, a Tellabs spokesman told Telephony this afternoon. If so, that would put Tellabs in second place chronologically within the trio of vendors.

Analysts had recently conjectured that Verizon's decision may help determine whether Motorola would continue in the wireline access business. Today's announcement, they would argue, means Motorola will continue to pursue that market.

In an email to Telephony this afternoon, a Motorola spokesperson said the company is committed to the wireline access space and that it expects to begin deploying GPON gear for Verizon in the third quarter of 2007.