January 10, 2016 - A recent market study by BSRIA, a UK-based building services and construction consultancy and market research company, shows that the market for POLs (Passive Optical Lans) is small, but growing fast and could become a threat to copper-based structured cabling networks over the next few years.
The following are short transcripts of the study:
"POLs (Passive Optical LANs) are here to stay, but their speed of market penetration will depend on: the manufacturers that go for it (mainly on the active component side), the increase in bandwidth without increasing costs, the compatibility of the systems vs. proprietary solutions and the time it takes for their benefits to become known to IT professionals, consultants, architects, developers and end users.
Currently POLs (ITU-T G.984) have bandwidths of 2.4Gb downstream and 1.2Gb upstream, however the next generation (ITU-T G987), which will appear on the market in 2016, will allow symmetrical bandwidths of 10Gb. BSRIA confirms that other 25Gb and 100Gb standards are expected to appear immediately.
POLs (passive optical networks) adapted to LANS (local area networks) are disruptive technologies. They bring a number of advantages that mainly benefit end-users, such as significantly reduced CAPEX, lower OPEX and consequently lower total cost of ownership of IT infrastructures".
This work by BSRIA provides an independent view of POL technology and its market.
You can learn more about POL on our dedicated Passive Optical Networks page or in this article from Building Construction Design magazine.