Currently, the global fiber optic PON market is in a rapid development stage. According to market research firms, the global fiber optic PON market size is USD 1.62 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 3.15 billion by 2025, with the rapid development and large-scale deployment of FTTH, the pace of fiber broadband acceleration continues to accelerate. Fiber-optic access network, as an important information infrastructure for the transformation of the digital society, is developing rapidly under the impetus of the broadband strategy of various countries.
The acceleration of fiber optic network deployment has helped drive the increase in gigabit connections. The analysts wrote, "By the end of 2020, there were less than 620 million fiber optic network subscribers globally, but we expect this number to increase to 719 million in 2022. By the end of 2022, China's fiber optic broadband access subscribers had surpassed 590 million, and the country is expected to be close to saturation with 660 million FTTH subscribers by 2025. Most of the fiber-optic subscriber growth will occur in the Chinese market, compared with China's near-saturation fiber-optic network penetration, the rest of the world will have a lot of room for growth in the coming period.
1000Mbps access is beginning to spread in China. The spread of broadband has dramatically changed the way people live and work, and has unleashed the imagination for more emerging services. Video services have become the basic fixed broadband service, replacing VoIP services as an important source of revenue for operators and stimulating trials and deployment of 4K and 8K services. However, the high-traffic nature of video services puts new requirements on network architecture and equipment deployment, such as downward deployment of equipment and gradual proximity to subscribers, network cloudification and virtualization, smart home networks, and optical fiber getting closer to subscribers and gradually replacing copper network cables. All these make all-fiber access become a development trend.
In the process of fiber access network construction, small-capacity OLT is favored by the majority of operators because of its compactness, lightweight, strong environmental adaptability, low cost and other characteristics. Small-capacity OLT meets the trend of optical access nodes close to users, diversified deployment scenarios, higher bandwidth issuance and wider resources, as well as the demand for cost-effective network construction.
Small-capacity OLTs are more suitable for sparsely populated areas because they can reduce investment in infrastructure such as trunk fiber, server room, power supply and air conditioning, which can help operators reduce costs. By using optical modules with larger optical power budgets, such as SFP optical modules, small-capacity OLTs can solve the problem of long-distance subscriber coverage. More flexible deployment, adapt to harsh natural environments, and achieve rapid coverage of FTTH networks, is the best solution for small and medium-sized operators of fiber optic networks.
In some remote areas are sparsely populated, long-distance network cabling costs are high, and network coverage faces difficulties. Deploying small-capacity OLTs is a cost-effective solution. In this case, small-capacity OLTs are deployed remotely to reduce the cost of server rooms and other ancillary costs. Small-capacity OLTs are configured with 10 km / 40 km / 80 km optical modules, connected via Ethernet GE or 10GE interfaces, and use high-density PON interface cards to cover a large number of users in remote areas.
At present, some small network operators do not have their own network rooms and fiber optic resources, but rent network equipment from large operators to provide home broadband and enterprise broadband services. Low-cost small-capacity OLT is the first choice of small telecom network operators, because small-capacity OLT takes up less space, lower power consumption, each PON port to provide higher density, the room space, indoor cabinets, power supply and air-conditioning requirements are lower, reducing the trunk fiber, conduit and room, power supply and air-conditioning investment, and help to reduce the overall operating costs.
Independent multi-tenant buildings, each household needs dedicated high-speed broadband access, small-capacity OLT is very suitable for small-scale multi-user fiber optic network layout, cost-effective. In this scenario, small-capacity OLT can be deployed in the building's small server room, do not need to occupy a large space, with optical network terminal ONU to provide cost-effective and stable fiber optic network connection to multiple users in the same building.
In the process of network construction in industrial parks, POL (passive optical LAN) solutions are increasingly becoming the first choice, and the construction of fiber optic network industrial parks has become a trend. Compared with traditional Ethernet LAN, passive optical LAN has the features of high security, low energy consumption, long distance, long service life, simplified network and centralized operation and maintenance. Operators are actively promoting the construction of POL networks based on their long-term investment and technical accumulation in developing PON access networks in the home broadband market. Compact and easy-to-install, small-capacity OLTs meet operators' basic needs for security and easy maintenance, and provide cutting-edge technologies such as low-latency PON and 5G convergence, occupying an important position in POL network construction.