| reply to iansltx
Re: Speeds? said by iansltx:What RFoG does do is make the transition easier to an all-fiber infrastructure; Metrocast techs can work with the connection like any other coax connection at the customer premises but the fiber is MUCH closer to the home than before, so there will be a lot less issues with last-mile network quality. Which is always a good thing. Plus, now they just have to swap out headend equipment and they'll have a full-on fiber system. Maybe they're waiting until 10GPON comes out (very soon) to maximize their investment... I think you hit nail on the head.
RFoG is a transition technology. It provides backwards compatibility and interoperability with existing Customer Premise Equipment (CPE; e.g. CMs and STBs) and some back end equipment (CMTSs, VOD servers, and auth/provisioning).
This allows cablecos to move to an all-fiber plant relatively seamlessly. And do so when they're ready, on a phased basis, so they don't blow out the bank.
In and of itself, RFoG will only provide marginal improvements. The thing is RFoG won't be, or at least shouldn't be, deployed by itself. It'll be likely be part of a PON-based fiber deployment that a cableco does to provide more advanced services. Ideally they should offer fiber like internet speeds over it, like 100+ Mb/s, as well as IPTV, and so on.
I think you might be right about them waiting for some technology standards to mature. 10G EPON should be out soon. Also RFoG hasn't been completely standardized yet either. Hopefully that will get done soon, and we can see some deployments.
I'm really hopeful for Wave Division Multiplexing-Passive Optical Networks, or WDM-PONs, though. It combines the best attributes of PONs, like no active field elements, with the flexibility and speed of active, point-to-point fiber links. Each customer would be on a shared fiber PON, like existing ones except potentially far more users and over longer distances, but they would all have their own wavelength on that fiber. So each customer could theoretically have 10 Gb/s dedicated symmetrical bandwidth, or what have you. There still needs to be work done to get the cost of the technology down, and it still needs to be standardized as well. But I hope we could see it deployed around 2015 or so. |
