IEEE Standards Association Declares EPON Standardization Milestone

IEEE (News - Alert) Standards Association has announced the successes of 28 companies and laboratories that participated in the IEEE P1904.1 Working Group and have received an important milestone in the development of the IEEE P1904.1 Service Interoperability in Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (SIEPON) standard.

According to a press release, this draft standard is largely complete from a technical perspective and has entered the IEEE P1904.1 Working Group letter ballot phase. The IEEE P1904.1 Working Group started its operations in January 2010 and reached this important milestone after 20 months of rigorous review and revision. Pending formal approval, this document will be published as an IEEE Standard and will provide open, international, system-level specifications that enable multi-vendor, "plug-and-play" interoperability in EPON systems.

IEEE EPON is a fiber-access technology known for its deployments supporting more than 60 million subscribers today and an anticipated subscriber base of more than 100 million by the end of 2013. These systems offer a diverse suite of business and residential services, including IPTV (News - Alert), VoIP, commercial-grade data services, and cellular backhaul. There is a, intense requirement from network operators for totally interoperable, "plug-and-play" solutions, available from a diverse community of suppliers.

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.

The following companies are included: ARRIS Group, Broadcom Corporation, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs(R)), China Telecom Corporation Ltd., CommScope, Inc., Cortina Systems (News - Alert), Inc., Enablence Technologies Inc., Ericsson AB, Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co., Ltd., Fujitsu Telecom Networks, Ltd., Hitachi, Ltd., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Ikanos, Iometrix, KDDI (News - Alert) R&D Laboratories Inc., Korea Telecom Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, NEC Corporation, NTT Corporation, Oki Electric Industry Co.

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