The world’s first certified GPON products were unveiled yesterday at ITU Telecom World in Geneva, a major milestone in expanding the deployment of high-speed fiber broadband and helping to ensure the support of a host of new multi-play, bandwidth-hungry services and devices coming online.

The seven vendors whose products won the first GPON certifications are Alcatel-Lucent, Broadlight, Cambridge Industries Group, Huawei, PMC-Sierra, PT Inovacao and Tecom. The global registry of certified products is available on the Broadband Forum Website at www.broadband-forum.org/technical/certifiedgpon.php. ? ?

The Broadband Forum GPON Certification Program is an industry first, aimed at verifying the conformance of GPON products and their adherence to the ITU-T GPON standard and to Broadband Forum specifications. According to the groups, “This paves the way for interoperability, giving service providers greater scope to expand their high speed broadband services cost-effectively.  It provides vendors with the opportunity to test once and use their certification globally, saving testing cost and time as they compete in RFPs for business.”

Says Malcolm Johnson, director/Telecommunication Standardization Bureau at the ITU, “We welcome and applaud BBF’s GPON certification program. Conformity to ITU’s internationally agreed standards will foster an environment where service providers can pick and choose equipment from a variety of vendors, and will greatly increase the probability of interoperability. This will increase competition and bring down costs… something especially important in developing countries.”?

As GPON increasingly becomes the choice for high-bandwidth and multiple-broadband services, manufacturers and service providers already are looking beyond the current generation to new architectures with XGPON and more. “The advent of certification will provide the breakthrough step in accelerating deployment now and creating the platform for future-proof development in new fiber networks,” the groups add.?

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