Ericsson ups the ante for GPON

LAS VEGAS--In addition to its suite of IPTV, backhaul and mobile platforms, Ericsson this week at NXTComm08 demonstrated a 10 Gb/s Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) for IPTV, what it calls the world’s first. The system has four times the bandwidth of existing GPON making it the highest switch capacity on the market.

In addition, the technology provider introduced an eight-port GPON board to double the capacity of its EDA 1500 GPON system, the deep-fiber access component of Ericsson’s IPTV access infrastructure. With this week’s upgrades, the EDA 1500 Optical Line Terminal can now serve more than 7,100 homes with deployments beginning in 2009.

Arun Bhikshesvaran, vice president of strategy and CTO for Ericsson in North America, said that as the company continues to expand its portfolio and reach more homes, it is focused on researching next-generation technologies to meet both the changing nature of next-generation TV networks and content and the changing next generation of customers.

“Whether it’s fixed or mobile access, entertainment is becoming a critical component of service provider offerings,” Bhikshesvaran said, adding that today’s generation of digital natives is moving towards a next-gen TV experience that is community based, interactive and personalized.

Digital natives are individuals, typically younger, who view multiple network connections as a part of their daily lives, according to Eric Cooney, president of Tandberg Television, a division of Ericsson. These consumers are increasingly watching video on multiple devices, in HD and often through video on-demand.

“Yesterday was interactive communication and basic digital,” Cooney said. “Today we are starting to see a converged world, and tomorrow it’s any content on any device, anywhere.”

Inherent in this converged world is the ability to interact between screens – either with the same content on each screen or a complementary experience of similar content reformatted for that particular screen. Bhikshesvaran said Ericsson is currently exploring both approaches. “The interaction is where it starts to be interesting,” he added.

The interaction between consumer’s mobile handsets and TV sets also means more pressure on the backhaul. In addition to TV, Ericsson focused on the mobile backhaul at NXTComm, demonstrating its platform that allows operators to carry non-real time packet data traffic and real-time sensitive voice traffic in TDM mode on the same radio infrastructure.

“The growth in data traffic is enormous,” Bhikshesvaran said. “While we all wanted it, in a lot of ways we were not 100% prepared for it. The backhaul experiences pressure, and we need an enormous amount of T1s.”

The backhaul platform dynamically uses the bandwidth between the packet and circuit side to utilize the T1 capacity and maintain flexibility, he said. Ericsson's mobile backhaul connects mobile radio base stations to deliver new broadband services in the converged environment, including mobile TV and other multimedia services.