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Earlier this month Verizon announced in a press release that it has begun laboratory testing of ADTRAN’s NG-PON2 technology, marking the first step toward commercial deployment. Verizon plans to introduce NG-PON2 initially for a range of business solutions in 2017, with residential rollout to follow as the technology matures and operational experience grows.
NG-PON2 is notable for its compatibility with existing fiber infrastructure. It requires only minimal changes to centralized electronics, making it an attractive upgrade path for operators that want to increase capacity without replacing large portions of their current network. That compatibility helps keep deployment costs lower and reduces the complexity of migration from existing passive optical network generations.
As cities adopt more connected and “smart” technologies, the demand for bandwidth and reliable transport will grow. Verizon aims to future-proof its network by testing NG-PON2, which can enable aggregated capacities up to 40 gigabits per second on a converged platform. That kind of increased capacity supports a mix of services—residential broadband, enterprise connectivity, IoT, and cloud-based applications—on the same access infrastructure, helping service providers handle rising traffic needs.
“NG-PON2, as evidenced by Verizon’s commitment to it, can be a game changer as service providers look to advance their service capabilities over existing access infrastructures and underpin the open, programmable, scalable service architectures of the future,” said Jay Wilson, ADTRAN’s senior vice president of Technology and Strategy. He emphasized that ADTRAN’s NG-PON2 platform uses advanced optical techniques to address one of the most costly parts of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architecture, broadening the business case so both business and residential markets become economically viable targets.
ADTRAN is providing the NG-PON2 fiber network architecture for Verizon’s tests, while Ericsson will supply networking equipment for the trials taking place at Verizon’s Innovation Lab in Waltham, Massachusetts. Vincent O’Byrne, Ph.D., director of network planning for Verizon, noted that ADTRAN and Ericsson (and other suppliers such as Calix) have developed distinct approaches to NG-PON2 that place them at the forefront of the industry’s evolution.
Technically, NG-PON2 supports tunable multi-wavelength operation that can be combined to achieve an aggregate of 40 Gbps capacity. This tunability offers flexibility in how operators allocate bandwidth across services and customers and makes the platform well suited for supporting residential gigabit broadband, large-scale data transfers, expanding IoT deployments, and premium cloud and enterprise services.
ADTRAN’s offering emphasizes a software-defined architecture that integrates with SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) frameworks. That design approach maximizes network automation and enables faster service provisioning, which reduces operational overhead and shortens time-to-market for new offerings. At the same time, software-driven control can enhance network integrity, simplify management, and improve overall quality of experience for end users.
For service providers, NG-PON2 presents a compelling path to scale capacity without wholesale replacement of access fibers. By enabling wavelength-level flexibility and higher aggregate throughput, operators can support a broader set of use cases on a single converged network—residential subscribers demanding gigabit speeds, enterprises requiring dependable high-bandwidth links, and IoT ecosystems that need reliable, low-latency access. The combination of hardware advances and software-defined control helps operators adapt to changing traffic patterns and deploy new services more quickly and efficiently.
Verizon’s lab testing phase will validate interoperability, performance characteristics, and operational procedures before broader commercial rollout. Lab trials typically address real-world concerns such as coexistence with legacy PON systems, wavelength coordination, service partitioning, and end-to-end orchestration. Successful testing would give Verizon and its partners the confidence to deploy NG-PON2 in production environments where predictable performance and manageable costs are essential.
The move toward NG-PON2 also reflects the industry’s broader shift to open, programmable architectures. By aligning fiber access upgrades with SDN/NFV principles, operators can build networks that are more flexible, easier to operate, and better able to support differentiated services. Those capabilities matter as operators balance investments in infrastructure with the need to deliver new revenue-generating services and improved customer experiences.
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