Regarding your original post:

Suminet uses Teknovus in China. In Japan Sumitomo uses both Teknovus and Passave (for different carriers).

Glen

VDSL is still exotic especially compared with 100baseT equipment and will never match the numbers for port deployments, it will never even get close, so there will always be a price advantage in anything Ethernet.

I would encourage anyone with aspirations of building a complex system in China to first try to get a house built. Than live in the house for six months. You’re ready for large scale business in China, when you finally stop of saying to yourself “WTF is that” each time you figure out why something does not function properly. My favorite is the A/C unit that was put in upside down “the drip tray was at the top” or another good one was the front door that was upside down with the lock on the wrong side. Unfortunately to achieve these WIERD insulations they usually had to drill lots of extra holes, so to fix the problem you have to scrap the existing solution and redo the work from scratch. I sure hope the next guy knows what he is doing.

Robert

You make some excellent points. You hit the nail on the head about labor issues in China.

A recurring point I like to make is that in the Western world, Things are cheap, and Labor is expensive. In China, Things are expensive, but Labor is cheap. Your point is skilled labor is not necessarily cheap. I agree.

Everything in China is MDU. I think VDSL will be the technology of choice for retrofitting old buildings. New buildings are good targets for fiber to the prem.

Also, it is a good idea to NEVER put your email in a comment unless you want massive spam…

Without a doubt China is a big potential FTTX play the only question in my mind is why they would want to get stuck with a concept as outdated as a US suburban FTTP system, the European GPON might get Alcatel hot and sweaty, but frankly it is equally irreverent in China.

Two things are happening in High tech China
1) Anyone with any technical skills is getting snapped up as quickly as you can train them, especially in Shanghai.

2) The middle class in China want the latest technology and have the money to pay for it, as well as the political pull to make sure it gets deployed.

However, to actually get a system deployed, on a significant scale, you need to be able to take farm hands and train them, on the job, to deploy your system. Your labor schedule will look something like;

Month One: Ditch digging
Month Two: Fiber splicing
Month Three: CPE installation
Month Six: Replaced, they found a better job (unless they are incompetent)

Sorry but in China this is the reality you need to deal with.

Unfortunately most FFTP systems use SMF28 cable with optical power splitters and Biplexer / Triplexer ONT’s. It is difficult to quickly deploy this equipment even with a US trained Telco team. IMHO anyone involved with the deployment of an FTTP system, like this, in China will learn some of life’s bitter lesson, the hard way.

Contrast this with the simplicity of a FTTC with 10/100baseT cat5 customer feeds. No specialty OLT’s and ONT’s, the optics is simple point to point GigE or OC48 style transceivers, system works even better if you can get it to run over MMF, look into some of the PAM work that Broadcom did for the 10GigE. Translate this into an asymmetric FTTX 1Gig channel over MMF and you have a system that really suits China. Here the intelligence is in the silicon, with MMF optics there is a lot more room for the sloppy assembly and the system has the smarts to correct for reflections and include concepts like FEC and laser pre-distortion.

If anyone is interested than give me a call, and we can discuss specifics.

Robert Talty
xxxx@xxxx.com (Edited by Webmaster to save comment author from a tirade of email spam…. )

GE-PON will give way to GPON, just check out all the worldwide RFP activity — Its not just limited to VZ.