SBC looks to PONs, WDM

Dallas—At the sparsely populated NFOEC conference in Dallas today, SBC had passive optical networking (PON) and WDM equipment vendors smiling. SBC is indeed very interested in those technologies. “We are looking beyond copper to fiber [solutions] like PON and WDM,” said Gregory Beck, vice president of network engineering at SBC. “PON has a lower cost fiber architecture because it enables a shared fiber architecture.” It is the low cost of optical splitters that has served as the “change agent,” making the technology much more attractive, according to Beck. SBC also is looking at deploying WDM with PON enhancements, Beck said. So far PON deployments, while attracting plenty of attention, haven’t gained much traction in the overall industry. But with strong words of encouragement from a large service provider such as SBC, that’s likely to change.--Liane H. LaBarba, senior editor