Ronan Kelly

As an industry, we are navigating uncharted territory. For the first time in the history of data connectivity, societies in the developed world are operating in a period of bandwidth abundance. From the inception of the internet to recent times, the connectivity from the home or business to the internet peering points or transit backbones has always been constrained by the capacity of the Wide Area Network (WAN). Originally dial-up, then various flavours of DOCSIS, DSL, and Microwave Wireless, the shift has finally occurred where fibre is being properly recognised as the only suitable foundation for the gigabit societies that governments around the world are scrambling to build.

Why is (or rather was) Point to Point Fibre preferred?

Those in the know have always considered fibre the limitless medium. With terabits per second achievable over a single fibre strand, it is difficult to argue with this; nonetheless, an architectural debate has consumed the fibre industry over the past 20 years. Point-to-Point (P2P) fibre connectivity delivers on that true vision of “limitless.” In contrast, Passive Optical Network (PON) fibre, a point-to-multipoint architecture, has always straddled the balance between resource efficiency and the ability to stay ahead of consumer demand.

The P2P proponents have long argued that the unlimited potential, particularly the symmetric capabilities of P2P networks, means they are the only credible way to build a “real” Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. For a long time, it was difficult to counter these arguments. Moreover, with uncontended 1 Gbps symmetric services on offer, it was difficult for those aligned to PON architectures to counter anything more than the more efficient use of resources.

During the last two years, this situation has largely been turned on its head.