Traditional PON Versus Mixed PON/Active Architectures Based on Ciena’s Universal Aggregation Solution (OPEX)

The Passive Optical Network (PON) architecture employs shared fiber to achieve cost savings for network operators, which is cost-effective over short feeders. The major attraction of the PON architecture is that it has a completely passive Outside Plant (OSP), eliminating active electronics from the OSP which are often fault-generating points, thereby simplifying network operation. This white paper establishes that the mixed PON/active architecture—based on Ciena’s Universal Aggregation Solution—addresses/mitigates network operators’ major pain point in deploying fiber in the access network to support broadband services.