GPON revenue surpasses EPON's in 1Q10

CALIFORNIA, USA: The first quarter Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) equipment revenues from both optical line terminals and optical networking terminals surpassed Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) revenues for the first time and hit a record level, says market research firm Dell’Oro Group.

The revenue grew almost 40 percent sequentially and 70 percent over the year ago period.

“GPON growth in the first quarter was largely due to deployments in China,” said Tam Dell’Oro, president, Dell’Oro Group. “China Unicom and China Telecom are deploying both EPON and GPON. China Mobile, which was recently granted permission to deploy broadband and for which GPON is its preferred technology, also contributed to first quarter GPON growth."

" Other sizeable GPON shipments in the first quarter included those to Korea, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the UAE and the US,” Dell’Oro added.     

The report shows that Huawei maintained its lead for GPON revenue largely due to being a primary supplier in the China market. Next was Alcatel-Lucent, which narrowed the gap with Huawei due to growth of its ONT shipments to North America and EMEA. Rounding out the top four was Motorola followed closely by Ericsson, which doubled its share mainly due to growth in their GPON shipments to China.