Since fiber network has become more and more popular, it is widely accepted in telecom industry that FTTx will be the final solution for the access network with limited bandwidth. GEPON (gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network) has been considered as the major method for fiber access network. However, its development has not reached the expected result in the past few years, due to lack of maturity, high price and its market position etc. Recently, Ocean Broadband Netowrks Ltd (OBN), which has being dedicating to developing GEPON in those years, and working closely with carriers to meet their requirement, has finally opened the door to the telecom market by using its high quality EPON products. Now OBN’s EPON products hav been applied to the “Net of Heaven” project for Sichuan Telecom and Chengdu Telecom on a large scale. This project has not only provided good opportunity for telecom enterprise business and service transition, but also started a new chapter that our EPON technology has been extensively used domestically.

Recently, The “Global Eyes” a real-time street safety monitoring system has been checked and accepted and put in use. This city-wide video surveillance project designed by Chengdu Telecom for chengdu city police system covers the whole city and nearby suburbs. After deployed, it has received good social benefit and has been honored as “Net of Heaven” ensuring the local area safety. At the evening of Nov 20, 2006, I finally found the project manager, Mr. Jin Feng, the principal of the department of Chengdu Telecom Network Development, who just came out of the “Net of Heaven” meeting from Chengdu Police Bureau. Principal Feng told us:”Police department are very pleased about this project. By using this system, chengdu police office has detected many criminal cases. As the project manager, I am very proud of the successful deployment of this project, as well as its contribution to the “Safe Chengdu” project and to the integrated services for VIP customers.” The plan and deployment of “Net of Heaven” designed by Chengdu Telecom has shown its understanding of customers’ requirements and the transitions of provided services. Feng mentioned. Recently, Sichuan province government has proposed a strategy to build up a harmony society and “Safe Sichuan”. Chengdu Telecom responded first and took this chance to give ideas, proposals and even a complete advanced solution. As one of the local biggest major carriers, It also took fully advantage of current network resource, boldly used the effective access technology including OBN’s GEPON as the integrated solution. The last and most important point is that Chengdu Telecom deployed the “Net of Heaven” project not just from the view of a network provider, but from view of customers, to provide an completely integrated solution. This marked Chengdu Telecom a successful practice on carriers’ service transition.

“ Global Eyes” Project Manager: Jin Feng ――The department director of Network Development at Chengdu Telecom

As an excellent access technology, PON has been gradually deployed on larger scale in US, Japan, Korea, and Europe, but not China yet. It was only on trial at some local areas. Director Feng has his own understanding. He pointed out that 95% of the current broadband access network of Chengdu Telecom is based on DSL. Although FTTH just started, Carriers should not consider it as a simple broadband access. It could be built up as an extension for the intelligentized communities. The cooperation between Chengdu Telecom and OBN was not an accident but the result of market requirement, said Feng. It happened when Chengdu Telecom was deploying a broadband network for a high-end office building. Since the number of fibers was limited in the cable and there was no way to setup new optical cable, Chengdu Telecom selected OBN for its high quality of products to provide data and telephony broadband services for its customers. Since then Chengdu Telecom has built up its confidence on EPON products. For Chengdu “Net of Heaven” project, OBN, as the sole EPON equipment vender, has provided 5000 lines of GEPON products. Feng explained: Since ADSL was limited by its uplink speed, and LAN had to be point to point connected, this project would cost a lot more by deploying tons of fibers and a lot of transceivers. As an access methods with point-to-multipoint high bandwidth fiber connection, PON netowrk is easier to be managed and cost efficient, fitted best for the video surveillance system. OBN had mature GEPON products with attractive prices. So our company was very satisfied as well as our customers.

The trend for telecom network evolving to IP network is irreversible. The opportunity for PON is hiding there. According to China’s special situation, “China Telecom in South and China NetCom in North”, it is a good opportunity as well as an existing competition among carriers. For one point of view, the competition pressure pushes carriers to use the most advanced technologies to meet the NGN network transition to IP-based; From the other perspective, customers’ requirement for high bandwidth, multi-services shows carriers’ current access network solution has no ability to meet its ambition. The emergent of PON technology has efficiently solved this difficult issues and can perfectly meet customers requirement for high bandwidth and multi-services at low cost.

Now more and more equipment venders and related parts venders has announced their plans and products supporting EPON or GPON standards. Carriers have also paid attention and well prepared to looking for its new applications. Internationally, German Telecom, 21CN, NTT, Verizon, AT&T have started or deployed their own optical access network. So we can see that PON has being applied and still has huge market potential. It has been successfully tested and commercialized, which eventually promote its development in China. Some authorities said that the city-concentrated China is the best market for PON-based FTTx.

Certainly, the driving power for PON’s development is coming from multi aspects, the most of which is from market. OBN’s sale director Mr Yuejun Long pointed out: The advanced technology and productivity of PON have getting strengthen and also attentions from many departments, especially from carriers. We hope to build up a full-service integrated platform based on FTTH. For the current China market, the key to get China market is to focus on large carriers, new grouped customers, and the coming IPTV.

Director Feng has the same consideration: Telecom transition has been the necessary route for carriers to succeed in the competition environment. It is a difficult topic for carriers on how to transit from traditional telecommunication network providers to fully informational and solution service providers. It is a considerable reference that Sichuan Telecom took advantage of resources and boldly used new access technology to provide service for VIP customers. It might have also provided a new train of thought for carriers to promote PON technology when Chengdu Telecom deployed EPON for new full-services.

I was so surprised when I heard of the high remarks on OBN’s EPON products from Chengdu Telecom, and saw OBN’s insight about the PON products and market potential, as well as their strength and late development advantage even though this company is not so well-known in the telecom industry. Sales Director Long told me frankly: When you talk about OBN, you have to mention a person, the CEO Wei Gao.

As Mr. Long said, Dr. Wei Gao, graduated from Tsinghua University and Chinese Academy of Science, dedicated to work on optical networks more than 10 years ago. He had founded companies like Salira (sold to Hitachi America) and Ocean Broadband Networks(OBN). OBN was founded in 2004 and was one of the earliest EPON companies. His continuing pursuit on optical telecom has finally paid off. Currently, OBN who is dedicating on developing high performance GEPON multi-service access platform has become one of the leaders. OBN’s products have been deployed in domestic broadband access networks, especial in Sichuan. Its customers includes China Telecom, China Netcom, China Cable, China Police Bureau etc different carriers and industries. Ocean6500 platform can carry multi-services like video surveillance, IPTV, large customer access, and VoIP etc.

Success depends on the vision and profession need focus. At the beginning of the optical telecommunication being used, there were different opinions on it in the industry. But OBN has had confidence on the optical access networks from the beginning. Even when the market did not give positive feedback on it years ago, OBN didn’t stop and see. After it got 2 rounds of funding (the second round was from Motorola Ventures and Atlas Ventures) OBN had enhanced its confidence on PON. CEO wei said: we are pleased to testify that EPON has accelerated the growth of broadband network market. With the new investment fund, we have confident to extend our business both in width and in depth.

Now as its product and its operation are getting more and more mature, OBN is becoming a professional company dedicated on developing high performance/cost GEPON broadband Access platforms. It has gathered a pool of optical talents from local, North America and Europe and accumulated multiple experiences on GEPON product development and popularization. Mr. Long said that based on IEEE802.3ah and GEPON standards for the Ministry of China Information Industry, OBN’s GEPON broadband access platform has solved the “last mile” bottle neck problem effectively and economically. OBN will continuously bring EPON’s features into play like high bandwidth, media sharing, and high QOS, easy management etc, to completely meet carriers’ special requirement for different businesses with low cost on network deployment and maintenance.

OBN’s multi series of products has been mature enough to be used on a large scale. The bigger capacity OLT can support multiple 1-Gbps PON lines, and its high bandwidth usage ratio and supportability for Ethernet service can ensure carriers to improve its quality of services. The high capacity ONUs can be used to provide best solutions for FTTB and FTTC applications.

At the end, Mr. Long told us: “PON development in China will succeed when conditions are ripe.

With the strength of its advanced technology and its mature products, OBN will steadily cooperate with our customers to discover the potential market application, and to make OBN brand more popular. We are going to apply the successful application model in Sichuan to the rest areas of China so that China Cable and China Telecom etc Carriers will know in depth of EPON’s attraction.”