As the migration towards disaggregation of Access Nodes, specifically Optical Line Terminal (OLT) devices, continues to gather pace, operators are on the lookout for new ways to achieve greater flexibility and interoperability.
An ONU is the end-user device or piece of equipment for Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) deployments that converts an optical fiber signal into a more conventional electrical signal that customers’ routers understand. An OLT is the operator’s equipment that connects with the ONUs to build out a network. It connects to the operator’s core network and helps to manage the end-user connections as part of the wider Passive Optical Network (PON). The OLT manages the configuration of the ONU via OMCI, where the OMCI software stack was historically embedded within the OLT.
Normally, because of OLT vendors’ advantage of technology and market share, they usually restrict other vendors’ ONUs from accessing their OLTs by technologies. And this causes operators to need to use the same vendor for both ONU and OLT to ensure no compatibility problems.
However, according to Omida’s report in 2021, the top 8 OLT vendors occupy 99% OLT market share in the world, and this limits the market competition and restricts operators from selecting new ONU vendors.
Resource from Omida research
Broadband Forum released its solutions in the middle of 2022. Its TR-451 vOMCI Specification and MR-451 ONU Management using Virtualized OMCI, enable operators to de-couple the Optical Network Unit (ONU) and OLT, and the OMCI software stack, avoiding OLT vendor lock-in and the management cycle of optical modems being tied to a specific vendor’s OLT or their software release cycles.
This encourages competition between vendors, with operators having increased freedom to choose from other ONU vendors and introducing more end-user devices into their network. Operators will, in theory, benefit from quicker and cheaper onboarding of new ONUs from different vendors and more easily migrate and evolve their networks.
As a competitive PON solution provider, Bland Technologies knows the OLT-ONU interoperability is a major pain point for operators. From the very beginning, its OLTs are designed with global standards and are open to other vendors’ ONUs. Also, its ONUs are compatible with almost all of the mainstream OLT vendors’ devices. We support any technologies or standards that can simplify the network architecture and make value to the ecosystem.
It’s time for breaking down barriers between network operators and ONU vendors
