According to the 2022 statistical bulletin of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China has 91.75 million fixed broadband users with an access rate of 1000 Mbps and above, 2.7 times the size of the end of last year, and the proportion has risen to 15.6%, far exceeding the set target, and has achieved leapfrog development.
In this context, China International Optoelectronic Expo and C114 Communication Network jointly held the “Gigabit Optical Network and Smart Home Technology Seminar”, inviting well-known experts from the industry to discuss the development prospects of Gigabit Optical Network and Smart Home. At the meeting, Tang Wei, vice president of ZTE Communications and general manager of optical access products, made a speech and pointed out that FTTR is the trend of the times. “FTTR can realize the sustainable upgrading of the whole family from true gigabit to two gigabit and ten thousand gigabit, and completely solve the long-standing problems of copper wire technology, distance, quality and environment.”

Tang Wei first pointed out that significant progress has been made in gigabit broadband, and there is still much room for development. From “optical fiber to the home” to “optical fiber to the home”, it will evolve from the two dimensions of gigabit network end-to-end and gigabit user penetration rate to the full gigabit direction in the future.
From the perspective of technical route, the key technologies of all gigabytes are represented by 50G PON, Wi-Fi 7, and FTTR, and the broadband value changes from connection to experience, and then expands to sophisticated scene applications. The broadband strategy of operators has also changed from the quantitative development of connection scale to the improvement of business and service quality and operation efficiency.
Among them, FTTR, as the current hotspot of gigabit construction, has been mentioned repeatedly by the industry. Tang Wei believes that FTTR is the trend of the times. At the same time, he should clearly see the problems of technology and market maturity, cost, user acceptance and project deployment in the development and promotion of FTTR. “These problems are in front of us, and we believe that with the joint efforts of the industry, they will be gradually overcome”.
At the same time, for FTTR network operation, Tang Wei said that there are universal problems in optical access operation. For example, the basic broadband big data acquisition and analysis means are lack of capacity, the broadband maintenance task is heavy, once there are business problems, there is a general dilemma of helplessness, and it is difficult to locate in a timely and effective manner. When developing gigabit broadband services, it also faces problems such as poor user perception and low marketing effectiveness. To this end, ZTE has developed a CEM user experience management system to help customers accurately and efficiently analyze and position the quality difference, actively improve their perception and service, and improve the success rate of active marketing based on broadband big data analysis.
As an important technology to promote the realization of full gigabit, Tang Wei stressed that 50G PON has become a definite evolution route of the next generation PON, and its driving force is not only from the application requirements of the ToB scenario. In the ToH scenario, with the development of services such as gigabit home access, business cloud, 8K/VR, and metauniverse, the user’s actual installation rate, gigabit penetration rate and penetration rate continue to increase, and the user’s intensive access to full gigabit, 50G PON support is indispensable.
Tang Wei suggested that in the next few years, with the gradual popularization of gigabit broadband, the introduction of 50G PON into the existing network should be considered in due time in the area with dense gigabit users, in combination with the withdrawal of existing network equipment. Following the law of industrial development, 50G PON will gradually be ready for large-scale commercial use after 2025. In terms of technology evolution, 50G PON and 10G PON Combo coexist, and the upgrading of 10G PON in the whole network, especially the upgrading of 10G PON ONU, should be accelerated to fully release the GPON wavelength.
“At present, accelerating the overall leading edge of 10G PON will also establish the competitive leading edge in the future 50G PON era,” Tang Wei said.
Tang Wei believes that, on the one hand, the network will become a more ubiquitous infrastructure, and the user-side network will be promoted to a strategic position, which may bring about huge changes in investment, construction, deployment and operation management. On the other hand, it is suggested to strengthen the attention and thinking on cloud network integration and network industry decoupling. At present, building edge cloud and edge computing power has become the consensus of the industry. Business virtualization and centralized pooling of operations make operators’ business more agile and ecosystem more open. “Finally, I call on the industry to study the digitalization of optical access operation and management more actively, and clarify the architecture and capabilities required for optical access.”