1 March 2022, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile internet, today has showcased its explorations and achievements in 50G PON research in the webinar titled “50G PON Builds a Sustainable Development of Broadband Network”, held by the renowned communications media outlet Light Reading at MWC 2022. 

The experts attending the webinar explored why 50G PON is the main development direction of post-10G-PON next-generation PON technology and what value 50G PON can bring. The discussion covered areas such as industry development, standards selection, key technologies and network deployment. In addition, the experts called on all industry stakeholders to promote the maturation of the 50G PON standards and industry chain. 

Yuan Liquan, Director of Standards Team of Fixed Network and Multimedia at ZTE, introduced the explorations and achievements made by ZTE in 50G PON research. According to Yuan, ZTE, as one of the first industry stakeholders to explore and develop 50G PON technology, has released an architecture solution for single-wavelength bi-directional symmetrical 50G PON transmission and the verification results of the solution. The company has also published a 50G PON Technical White Paper and made major breakthroughs in the development of key 50G PON components such as ultra-high-speed Trans-Impedance Amplifiers (TIAs) and Digital Signal Processors (DSPs). 

“ZTE has submitted more than thirty 50G PON standards proposals, with those on technologies including physical layer parameters, low latency, and Forward Error Correction (FEC) already being adopted by standardization organizations,” said Yuan. “Additionally, ZTE’s Combo PON solution enables smooth evolution from 10G PON to 50G PON and allows for service migration from the existing networks.” 

Sterling Perrin, Senior Principal Analyst of Optical Networks & Transport at Heavy Reading, analyzed the development history of FTTx network technology, pointing out that as the only next-generation PON standard recognized by ITU-T, 50G PON has witnessed rapid development and gained great significance in recent years. 

Zhang Dezhi, Optical Access Senior Expert of China Telecom Group and a co-editor at ITU-T, expounded the reasons behind ITU-T choosing 50G PON as the main next-generation PON technology and shared China Telecom's experience in researching and piloting 50G PON technology. 

“China Telecom believes that 50G PON technology has the key features of ‘one system’, coexistence between two technology generations, and rates five times higher than 10G PON,” said Zhang. “In 2022, China Telecom will continue to work with ZTE on 50G PON technology research.” 

Jesús Ferrán Vallejo, Head of Fixed Access Engineering & Network Laboratory of Orange, believes that 50G PON has become the industry’s consensus choice of next-generation PON technology. He shared Orange's views and practices in developing next-generation PON technology. 

According to Jesús Ferrán Vallejo, Orange, as a leading telecom operator, has been actively participating in and promoting the formulation of standards by international standardization organizations such as ITU-T. The company pays close attention to the technical evolution, standardization progress and industry chain development of new technologies like 50G PON. One of Orange’s focuses is on reusing the existing network resources to reduce the cost of smoothly evolving towards 50G PON. 

In 2016, ITU-T started discussions on post-10G-PON next-generation high-rate PON technology, then initiated the next-generation PON standards project and named it G.HSP. After extensive research, ITU-T eventually decided to adopt 50G PON as the main technology for next-generation high-rate PON. In the future, after 50G PON standardization is fully completed, operators can use the innovative technologies enabled by 50G PON to more efficiently prolong the life of networks and equipment and better provide users with high-value services.