Viewpoint
AirPON is emerging as a technology of choice to help service providers quickly provide high-quality gigabit fiber broadband services in remote and difficult to reach areas.
This was recently highlighted in the Murmansk region in Northwest Russia, where Huawei and Russian Rostelecom came together to use AirPON technology to speed up the Internet connection of private households in the area.
More than 120 km of cable was installed in Teriberka in 2020, in spite of highly harsh climatic conditions. As a result, the region now ranks second in Northwest Russia in terms of digitalization.
In an unprecedented speed, AirPON helped in covering 100 households in just three days. AirPON’s compactness, minimal installation and connection time makes it easy for the service providers to place the equipment on the street without renting premises, allowing them to provide reliable broadband even in areas with harsh climatic conditions.
“The AirPON technology appeared at the right time, and we gladly agreed to implement it together with Huawei, which made very high-quality equipment,” said Alexander Loginov, Vice President and Director of the North-West macro-regional branch of PJSC Rostelecom
AirPON accelerates full-fibre access network construction and continues to achieve business innovations worldwide
Launched by Huawei, the innovative SingleFAN Pro solution (AirPON) can provide excellent Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network services for the contestants with the end-to-end digitalization capability. It consists of Huawei OptiXaccess series Blade OLTs, Digital QuickODN (DQ ODN) and OptiXstar series ONTs.
The AirPON solution offers free right-of-way and site acquisition, free fiber splicing, and fast service provisioning, which could help global operators build high-quality optical access networks in the next ten years. Take the case of Huawei OptiXaccess series blade OLTs, which can be deployed for one site acquisition by just two technicians in just one day on existing wireless sites and power systems.
Further, the DQ ODN deployment brings down the fibre deployment distance from seven to ten kilometres to just one kilometre without any Right of Way (ROW) issues hindering the deployment. Moreover, it enables the Fiber Access Terminals (FATs) and fibres to be installed within four days. At the same time, Huawei OptiXstar series ONTs support plug-and-play and can be used to quickly provision ultra-high-speed home broadband services in no more than two days.
Another successful commercial deployment of the AirPON solution is in Liebujia village in Qinghai district, a rural area in China. Qinghai is known as the `Yak capital of the world’ and livestock farming is the main occupation of the people in the region. The region is sparsely populated, making it challenging for the service providers to lay down the network.
Huawei and China Unicom collaborated to use AirPON, which brought down the time needed to deploy traditional gigabit optical networks from 47 days to just one day. The new network reused the base stations deployed earlier in the village.
The highly integrated AirPON solution deployed on the pastures at the hilltop can transmit back the high-definition (HD) videos in real-time, making yak farming become worry-free and labour-saving. By the end of 2021, Qinghai Unicom has connected 1.1 million villagers in 1413 villages in Qinghai province by providing high-speed intelligent gigabit optical networks.
Full-fiber access is crucial for development of global digital economy
By the end of 2021, the Huawei AirPON solution has been delivered more than 32,000 sets by over 170 carriers over the world, including Mexico, Dubai, Ghana, the Arctic region in Russia, and even Mount Everest.
As our dependency on high-speed internet has gone up in all geographies, there is an urgent need to connect the unconnected. The Huawei AirPON can quickly propel rural economies by providing gigabit-speed fibre connectivity. The World Bank says a 10% increase in broadband penetration can increase the Gross Domestic Production (GDP) by 1.2 to 1.3%. On the other hand, Omdia says that the proportion of FTTH users will increase significantly in the next five years.
There is then a growing consensus in the industry to construct intelligent full-fiber access networks to deploy broadband services quickly. The operators can monetize this by providing new-age services, like Virtual Reality, 4K/8K video and Augmented Reality, among others.
Huawei stressed that developing optical access networks will play a crucial role in shaping the future digital life at the All-Optical Target Network Forum last October.
Huawei will continue to spur fixed-mobile convergence and innovation in the optical field and will continue to provide innovative SingleFAN Pro solutions, including AirPON, to connect the unconnected and provide full-fibre access networks with superior and best-in-class network performance to its customers.
