Update: Alloptic is 1-for-23 in PON trials
 
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Alloptic this week said that out of 23 concurrent Gigabit Ethernet passive optical network (PON) field trails announced in May, only one has been implemented successfully to date.
The successful implementation belongs to Knology, a provider of bundled communications services in the Southeastern U.S. Alloptic says it plans to phase the other trials in throughout the year.
Knology is trialing Alloptic's GigaForce Gigabit Ethernet PON, a system that uses Alloptic's patented burst-mode optical transceiver technology to operate symmetrically at 1.25G bit/sec. Alloptic claims GigaForce will enable Knology to leverage its excess fiber plant and provide voice, video and data services to small businesses.
Knology officials declined to comment, saying that the trial was a confidential, non-disclosure agreement between the companies. They say they had no knowledge of Alloptic's press release on the field trial.
But according to Burnie Atterbury, Alloptic senior director of product marketing, one requirement of the field trial entails extending Knology's broadband footprint around 70 km from the central office. Atterbury says this extension will allow end-users to upgrade their existing dial-up connections to 100M bit/sec Internet connections, several T-1s and additional lines for voice.
"Basically we feel like we've brought people out of the Dark Ages," Atterbury boasts.
Atterbury was reluctant to disclose other PON vendors who may have competed for this trial. Competitor Quantum Bridge, however, says the Knology application isn't a true PON.
The Knology field trial is more of a point-to-point fiber run versus a point-to-multipoint PON, a Quantum Bridge spokesman says.
"With the splits common in a true point-to-multipoint architecture, it's nearly impossible to run a PON spanning 70 km," the spokesman says.
Quantum Bridge supports 20 km per the maximum number of end-points per PON, which in Quantum Bridge's case is 32.
"We can extend the distance by reducing the number of end-points, but the fact that we can span 20 km, or about 12 miles, is the exception, not the rule," the spokesman says. "This sort of distance in the access network is a non-issue since most end-users are, on average, within six miles of their point of presence."
Atterbury acknowledges that the Knology PON trial, with only a single optical networking unit, is essentially a point-to-point architecture. He also concurs with Quantum Bridge's assertion that distance is a limitation of the number of splits in a PON system. The general parameter is 32 splits, and the industry generally looks at a 32-split network within 15 km, Atterbury says.
Alloptic could not say when the Knology field trial will end.
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