In a press release, Japan’s NEC Corporation has announced that it has supplied a 10 Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network (10G-EPON) system to domestic carrier KDDI Corp, to support the latter’s residential fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) service ‘au Hikari Home 10 giga’. The new offer, NEC claims, enables the world’s fastest upstream and downstream speeds of up to 10Gbps. The vendor’s 10G-EPON system consists of an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) installed within KDDI facilities and an Optical Network Unit (ONU) installed inside the homes of individual subscribers.
‘The need for high speed and large-capacity internet is expected to continue rising with the sophistication and high-definition of content and the increase in mobile data traffic such as Wi-Fi offload. In addition to this 10G-EPON system for KDDI, NEC will continue to work on the development of optical access technologies that support the strengthening of telecommunications carrier services,’ said Kazuhiro Tagawa, Deputy General Manager, Network Solutions Division, NEC Corp.
In an unrelated development, KDDI and Samsung have competed a 5G field trial in a baseball stadium in Japan, successfully downloading and streaming a live feed of 4K video on a 5G tablet at Okinawa Cellular Stadium. In a joint statement the companies announced that to facilitate the trial, Samsung installed 5G access units with beam-forming technology on a light tower in the stadium. Samsung and KDDI believe that the successful outcome of the trial will hopefully lead ‘to new viewing experiences in crowded places like international conferences and music concerts using 5G and ultra-high frequency spectrum, such as the 28GHz used for the trial’. In December 2017 Samsung and KDDI achieved download speeds of 1.7Gbps on a high speed train in Tokyo.