PISCATAWAY, NJ – IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) announced that the 28 companies and laboratories in the IEEE P1904.1 Working Group achieved an important milestone in the IEEE P1904.1 Service Interoperability in Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (SIEPON) standard.
After 20 months of review and revision, this draft standard is largely complete from a technical perspective and has entered the letter ballot phase. Pending formal approval, the document will be published as an IEEE Standard. It will provide open, international, system-level specifications that enable multivendor, plug-and-play interoperability in EPON systems. The SIEPON draft standard covers both 1G-EPON and 10G-EPON and describes the transport, service and control planes.
Sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society, the draft standard will facilitate EPON deployments for operators. EPON is the most widely used fiber-to-the-home technology globally, with deployments that support more than 60 million subscribers today and an anticipated base of more than 100 million subscribers by the end of 2013. Business and residential services supported on EPON networks include IPTV, VoIP, commercial-grade data services and cellular backhaul.
Network operators are demanding fully interoperable, plug-and-play solutions from a diverse community of suppliers. To meet this need, the IEEE P1904.1 SIEPON working group is developing a complete and testable standard that offers clear-cut guidance to component manufacturers, system manufacturers, network operators and testing laboratories.
Pending completion and formal approval of the draft, deployment of IEEE P1904.1 SIEPON-compliant equipment is expected to begin in 2012.
Members of the IEEE P1904.1 Working Group include ARRIS Group, Broadcom Corporation, Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs), China Telecom Corporation, CommScope, Cortina Systems, Enablence Technologies, Ericsson AB, Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co., Fujitsu Telecom Networks, Hitachi, Huawei Technologies, Ikanos, Iometrix, KDDI R&D Laboratories, Korea Telecom Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, NEC Corporation, NTT Corporation, Oki Electric Industry Co., Oliver Solutions, PMC-Sierra, Qualcomm Atheros, Research Institute of Telecommunications Transmission, China Academy of Telecommunication Research (RITT, CATR), Sumitomo Electric Industries, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), Victor R. Blake and ZTE Corporation. Other companies are invited to join the group.
