ZTE shares insights into challenges and strategies for multi-service access at Broadband Forum workshop

21 October 2022, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a global leading provider of information and communication technology solutions, today announced that Chen Aimin, Chief Optical Access Architect at ZTE Corporation, has shared insights into the technological challenges and coping strategies for multi-service access in the 10G Passive Optical Network (PON) era at the Broadband Forum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

“The 10-Gigabit-capable Symmetric Passive Optical Network (XGS-PON) has a mature industry chain now and is ready for large-scale deployments, which will vastly enhance the multi-service access capability of PON networks,” said Mr. Chen.

Mr. Chen shared cases of large-scale 10G PON construction in China, highlighting its great role in advancing the digital transformation of the whole society in the post-pandemic era. The XGS-PON technology delivers symmetric 10G bandwidth to meet the requirements of innovative services like distance education, cloud Network-Attached Storage (NAS), and livestreaming for high bandwidth both in the uplink and downlink.

“XGS-PON, from optical modules to Optical Line Terminals (OLTs), is ripe for large-scale commercial deployments. Compared with the asymmetric XG-PON technology, XGS-PON delivers more value for networks. Faced with the pressure to increase revenue, operators need a more open and agile network that allows new services to be developed flexibly and provisioned rapidly,” added Mr. Chen. “However, high-value services have higher standards for user experiences, requiring that the network provide deterministic assurances for service forwarding. Service complexity poses bigger challenges to the reliability of networks. Network faults need to be automatically diagnosed, fixed and optimized to improve Operation and Maintenance (O&M) efficiency and boost user experiences.”

The Software-Defined Access Network (SDAN) technology is employed to expose the foundational capabilities of the OLT to the SDAN controller through the NETCONF/YANG protocol. The Information Technology (IT)-based architecture of the SDAN controller makes the network more open and agile so that operators can innovate services rapidly. The service slicing technology is utilized to provide Hierarchical Quality of Service (HQoS)-based soft slices and rigid pipe-based hard slices, achieving deterministic bandwidth, latency, and jitter for service forwarding and ensuring the user experience of different services.

To meet the high requirements of multi-service access for network reliability, the concept of an autonomous network is introduced to strengthen the big data analytics capability of the PON network. Consequently, PON O&M is transformed from passive handling of faults into proactive prediction and fixing of faults. Meanwhile, service slices are used to implement differentiated forwarding of user services. Closed-loop self-optimization of mechanisms such as the monitoring of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of service channels and the caching and scheduling of service slices ensure good user experiences. 

Broadband Forum is focused on accelerating broadband innovation, ecosystem development and the evolution of broadband networks. Its members continue to develop multi-service access networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market.

Based on Broadband Forum standards and ZTE's own understanding of multi-service access, the company has launched TITAN, its flagship optical access product designed for the 10G PON era. TITAN provides new multi-service access features like high-density 16-port XGS-PON Combo cards, Broadband Forum YANG, service slicing, and native intelligence. Aiming to make PON networks super-fast, deterministic, open, agile and intelligent, TITAN provides an excellent solution for delivering wired full-service access in the last mile to boost global digital transformation.