said by andrewRedHil :

You must be talking about the Motorola ONT being backwards compatible, most BPON was built with telelabs that is not and will need to be replaced.

said by tmc8080 :

Rather, what I meant was.. even though they replace the CO equipment with GPON capable line-cards, etc. the end ONT's don't automatically have to be replaced unless necessary. In other words, they don't have to swap out 100% of the customer premise ONT's to GPON if a CO is GPON. Strange to learn that GPON line cards modulating a BPON signal wouldn't be compatible with BPON ONT's from another manufacturer.

** They couldn't be that stupid, as to make things difficult for them, now would they?

said by nycdave :

That is not how it works - BPON ONT's will not work on a GPON line card and vice versa...and interoperability is not ready yet..So only the same manufacturer's ONT will work on the same manufacturer's line card.