Active Ethernet vs. GPON

rrh said:
The project is already "flying" :)

The cost to the suburb is the same irrespective of the architecture used, i.e. no charge. Furthermore the backhaul stays pretty much the same, so can (I believe) be ignored for the purposes of this discussion.
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Then go for active. :confused: If someone is willing to pull individual fibre to each house at the same cost then let them
 
rrh said:
All of the research that I have read recommends GPON solely on the basis of cost: one can install as many as seven GPON connections for every one active Ethernet connection.

Future bandwidth shortfalls can possibly be met by switching to XG-PON and/or NXG-PON, but at what price and whose account ?

Whereas active Ethernet allows - today - a one GB connection. And since we aren't paying for it ... :)
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You are right - it's mainly about the cost.

To an extent, it's also about environmental impact (for those who include that as a criterion) - which is primarily around initial deployment, but also related to ongoing power requirement.

If you are choosing between two reputable operators and they will charge the same installation and line fees regardless, then you have a point that active is a good consideration. I certainly don't have a 'missionary zeal' or any financial interest for promoting GPON. My observation is purely from what I've seen - that the debate appears to be over-hyped.

In terms of ongoing costs and who pays: that would be as per your agreement. It's most common for telcos to absorb their own upgrade capex as well as opex (labour and electricity) but it is a pertinent question re the CPE upgrade (eg if an additional filter is required).

I imagine that all technologies will involved upgrades of one or more active elements - if not in 2 years than certainly within 5-7 years or so.

We have yet to find out in SA, but perhaps a key issue in the long run is cost structure, or whether a fibre operator can run at low enough longer term costs (most likely opex) to absorb the market pressure for ongoing price/data reductions. That's one reason that equipment is sometimes replaced even though it is working
 
Chris.Geerdts said:
You are right - it's mainly about the cost.

To an extent, it's also about environmental impact (for those who include that as a criterion) - which is primarily around initial deployment, but also related to ongoing power requirement.

If you are choosing between two reputable operators and they will charge the same installation and line fees regardless, then you have a point that active is a good consideration. I certainly don't have a 'missionary zeal' or any financial interest for promoting GPON. My observation is purely from what I've seen - that the debate appears to be over-hyped.

In terms of ongoing costs and who pays: that would be as per your agreement. It's most common for telcos to absorb their own upgrade capex as well as opex (labour and electricity) but it is a pertinent question re the CPE upgrade (eg if an additional filter is required).

I imagine that all technologies will involved upgrades of one or more active elements - if not in 2 years than certainly within 5-7 years or so.

We have yet to find out in SA, but perhaps a key issue in the long run is cost structure, or whether a fibre operator can run at low enough longer term costs (most likely opex) to absorb the market pressure for ongoing price/data reductions. That's one reason that equipment is sometimes replaced even though it is working
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I must admit that I hadn't thought much about the technology until I started researching GPON, initially mainly to establish the reasoning behind the split ratios. Once I twigged that GPON was basically a multicast technology - with TDMA for upstream - all fell into place.

In our particular case the point-to-point will be between each household and the supplier's point-of-presence. This takes care of the power requirements of an active network. Upgrades will typically be limited to a change of a switch at the point-of-presence whilst repairs - if fibre related - will typically be limited to switching to one of the spare strands to the household.

We were also concerned about environmental impact of the initial deployment but since the method of laying cable is independent of the technology used there isn't much that we can do about it. OTOH it is more likely that a GPON upgrade (or repair) will result in trenching so if we go active Ethernet we are in fact doing our bit.

The FTTH market is becoming very exciting. At least one ISP that I know of has torn up its initial pricing plans and now offers something a lot more sensible. Throttling - and, in some cases, after-hours bandwidth - are also becoming a thing of the past.

We definitely live in interesting times !
 
koeksGHT said:
https://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/gov/gpon_paper.pdf
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(this is not a response to RRH but just a comment on the article cited as we all want to be better informed of the issues)

It is an interesting article and brings up real issues.

It gives a good snapshot of the state of the industry nearly 3.5 years ago. This is a relatively fast-moving field so I would be looking at recent inputs as well (not to punt my own research at all :whistle:). There have been standards passed as recently as 2015.

I agree that active is well suited to an academic campus, with significant intra-departmental traffic and massive broadband requirements for some of their big data projects. That's the same as scanning one's customers for any specific big-data or other criteria requirements (my post above). Certainly my suburb (Constantia) does not equate strongly to a campus. We will have some very affluent customers but feel GPON will serve our needs. But then again, we weren't priviledged to have Vumatel join our bid in our area.
 
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GPON is used by more service providers than any other form of FTTH,
Many service providers use both GPON and AE in the same network for different applications, as each has its own advantages.

The argument about AE being future proof is exactly the same for GPON,

AE is currently up to 1G but the current hardware will not support higher capacity, Central office switches deployed may have 10G uplinks but only 1GE customer ports, to deliver higher speed services these switches and the CPE will need to be replaced,

Next generation NGPON 2 (which is currently being deployed/tested) will support 80G of capacity on the same fibre infrastructure as today, while coexisting with todays technology, it will still need new equipment but will actually offer higher capacity than AE.

AE has a longer range than GPON,
GPON supports up to 20Km with a 32:1 and up to 60Km with high power optics, NGPON 2 has have a range of up to 40 Km

Today many service providers actually use GPON to deliver GE services including Google and Century link and many others in the US.
 
In theory you are correct with an absolute 1:1 contention ratio.

In reality, using a 64:1 split on a signal GPON port gives a contention ratio of 2.5:1 due to that random nature of data and statistical multiplexing that is not even noticeable. Many customers using GPON have 100M services today and notice no contention, in fact in the US many operators deploy 1G services on GPON, even the mighty Google use GPON for there GIGABIT Cities.

Currently there are XGPON deployments that offer multiple 10G capacities, and NGPON 2 will be available early next year, with 80 GE of capacity, on a single port.
 
So as I understand it a user on a GPON network can still get for instance 1Gbps if no other users are using the network at that time?
 
oober said:
So as I understand it a user on a GPON network can still get for instance 1Gbps if no other users are using the network at that time?
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CPE dependant, but in most cases yes. Theoretically you can get 2.5GBps down and 1.25GBps up when uncontended, but as far as i know most equipment providers only make 1GBps CPE's
 
Thanks to all who contributed to the learning experience!

Perhaps someone can explain why Vumatel's "expensive" AE service is cheaper - by a lot - than Telkom's GPON?
I'm looking at WebAfrica's FTTH pages (https://www.webafrica.co.za/fibre/ - specifically the What Does Fibre Cost tab), where they quote Vumatel's 4Mbps capped offering at R349pm with no installation fee, and Telkom's 4 Mbps at R639pm plus a R1749 installation charge.

I understand that Telkom might be worried about attrition of their ADSL installed base, but with this price structure, they're going to lose their ADSL customers to Vumatel every time instead. Or did I miss something?
 
moron51 said:
Thanks to all who contributed to the learning experience!

Perhaps someone can explain why Vumatel's "expensive" AE service is cheaper - by a lot - than Telkom's GPON?
I'm looking at WebAfrica's FTTH pages (https://www.webafrica.co.za/fibre/ - specifically the What Does Fibre Cost tab), where they quote Vumatel's 4Mbps capped offering at R349pm with no installation fee, and Telkom's 4 Mbps at R639pm plus a R1749 installation charge.

I understand that Telkom might be worried about attrition of their ADSL installed base, but with this price structure, they're going to lose their ADSL customers to Vumatel every time instead. Or did I miss something?
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I would like to know also.
It seems as though all the big players(MTN, Vodacom, Telkom) charge much more than the smaller businesses, even though they already have all the infrastructure.
 
There are cases for both technologies in FTTH deployments and each is dependent on the specific nature of the installation. It's also highly dependent on the fibre provider. Some offer fibre but split using PON to such an extent that the end user experience as the network fills up, will be heavily contended. You want a good fibre planner from the outset...
 
FLHEM said:
I would like to know also.
It seems as though all the big players(MTN, Vodacom, Telkom) charge much more than the smaller businesses, even though they already have all the infrastructure.
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This is the thing...they actually don't have all the fibre infrastructure. They have to build the fibre last mile just the same as Vuma, it's a level playing field.

With Dark fibre africa in the mix, that sorts Vuma's backhaul also and once you in Teraco all the ISP's are there.

It simply seems Vuma has a more efficient way of putting fibre into the ground for a specific area hence lower prices, I know they use a pull back fibre solution from Prysmian called Retractanet, it's a pretty efficient way to install on demand ftth.
 
eddief1 said:
This is the thing...they actually don't have all the fibre infrastructure. They have to build the fibre last mile just the same as Vuma, it's a level playing field.

With Dark fibre africa in the mix, that sorts Vuma's backhaul also and once you in Teraco all the ISP's are there.

It simply seems Vuma has a more efficient way of putting fibre into the ground for a specific area hence lower prices, I know they use a pull back fibre solution from Prysmian called Retractanet, it's a pretty efficient way to install on demand ftth.
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It is actually not the cost of putting fibre in the ground that is that much different from player to player. It is the time over which they want to make a return on investment. The smaller and more unknown players have long ROI periods (10-12 years), while the Vodacoms and MTNs have a very short ROI period (2-3 years). This is similar to taking out a loan and changing the time over which you have to repay that loan. The shorter the time, the larger the installments. Sure there are some differences in the cost of rolling out fibre from provider to provider but this is not close to the largest part of the equation.
 
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