PON is active expanding due to its ability to satisfy demand of better quality broadband with low cost of passive components. Most communication operators are using FTTx and they enjoy PON solution due its cost/performance advantage. It is already optimal solution for greenfield installations and attractive enough for the brownfield migration from DSL to PON. PONs strategy of deployment “one neighborhood at a time” allows receive revenues for the next neighborhood by implementing current one.

PON is evolving as new passive components being invented. First standardized PON technology was BPON, then EPON and GPON. EPON was developed as the tool for exploring Ethernet as the encapsulation layer. With its transmission speeds of 1 Gbps it was good enough to be used by Japan in 2003. GPON was doubling that speed for downstream and was used by North American companies. Differences between different PONs are in their supported line routes and type of bearer packets.

Next-generation PON is already in development – the XG-PON is compatible with both current technologies – GPON and EPON. XG-PON is having wavelength that is compatible with video overlay and is implementing dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). It allows multiple logical PONs with different upstream and downstream wavelengths.