FTTH for cable companies

Sat Oct 19 17:48:54 UTC 2013

On 10/19/2013 6:35 AM, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
> I need a reality check...
>
> For telcos, going from barely twisted copper pair to FTTH presents huge
> incremental improvement. FTTN is basically a stop gap medium term
> solution that is more pleasing to some beancounters.
>
> However, for a cable company, is there an advantage to deploy FTTH/GPON
> to bring light originally destined to the neighbourhood node all the way
> to the home and do away with coax ?
>
> From what I have read, cablecos limit FTTH deployments to greenfields.
>
> Do they save much by replaciung the "node" with a simple optical
> splitter which no longer limits how much upstream bandwidth is
> retransmitted back to head end ?
>
> Will there be a point in the next 10 years where cable companies might
> start to upgrade brownfields from coax to FTTH as some telcos have done ?
>
> While in Canada, FTTH deployment by telcos has been accompanied with
> IPTV deployments on the data path (single wavelength), I hear that
> Verizon has used twin wavelengths, on for GPON data, and one for RFoG
> for TV signals. Would it be fair to state that FIOS is basically
> identical to FTTH deployments by cable companies ?
>
> Do twin wavelength systems as deployed by Verizon end up costing far
> more ? Or is the price difference mininal ?
>
> Any information/insight appreciated.
>

Doing RFoG forward path is simple.  The reverse path isn't.  VZ has an
IP reverse path for VOD asset purchases and keeping their STBs in
contact with whatever element management they use.
VZ STBs depend on the the local VZ provided CPE as the reverse path for
communication.

It's been a while since I've looked at a PON deployment but I believe
the xPON waves are passively muxed with an EDFA amplified video wave and
then sent to the outside plant.