High speed Internet access and the desire to present a “one stop” shop for voice, video and data are pushing bandwidth demands throughout the telecommunications industry. Increased bandwidth demand in turn creates interest in deploying more fiber throughout the network. FTTX offers much greater bandwidth than other broadband technologies such as DSL, VDSL and cable services.
There are two broad categories of FTTX architectures - Active Ethernet and PON. In an Active Ethernet architecture, switches are arranged in a star configuration. In a PON architecture, the services are delivered through a tree and branch configuration. Active Ethernet star configurations provide dedicated fibers between the end points and the Ethernet switch point of presence. These connections are usually 100 Mb/s or 1000 Mb/s. PON configurations use passive optical splitters to distribute the optical signal to each customer using splitting ratios up to 1:32.
By using Passive Optical Network (PON) architecture in FTTX deployments, operating costs are lowered by reducing the number of active components in the network. With PON architecture, all active components are placed at the ends of the fiber and passive optical splitters are placed in the field. PON technology also employs bi-directional communications over a single fiber strand. Fiber to the x (FTTX) is a generic term for any network architecture that uses optical fiber to replace all or part of the usual copper local loop used for telecommunications.
Examples of FTTX applications and solutions that Walker offers include:
Active Ethernet
Active Ethernet is a point-to-point fiber solution that delivers the greatest bandwidth per subscriber of any FTTX option available today, providing 100 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth upstream and downstream. Active Ethernet fiber can operate up to 40km, twice the normal reach of PON networks.
Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON)
GPON utilizes point-to-multipoint architecture and a passive fiber splitter is used to split the fiber to multiple premises.
Outside Plant
Supported by industry leading technologies, Walker’s diverse offering of outside plant solutions include products such as enclosures, cabinets, copper and fiber cable, splicing and termination, and underground solutions.
Customer Premises Equipment
Customer premises equipment (CPE) is any type of device that connects to the telecommunications network and located at the customer site. Our CPE product offering includes switching/routing equipment, modems, media gateways, NIDs, phone systems, and more.
Fiber Testing
Testing the quality of the optical link is a mandatory step to ensure the quality and stability of video, voice and data components in the FTTX network. With advanced testing capabilities integrated in our testing solutions, we support various types of applications, whether it is installing a new network, turning up services for new customers, or troubleshooting the existing infrastructure for maintenance.