Telecom Wholesale's Broadband over Fibre pilot delivers a ‘fibre to the home' service utilising Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology.

Fibre is widely acknowledged as the access of the future and GPON technology is the global technology of choice for delivering super-fast broadband to end-users over optical fibre networks.

A GPON is a point to multipoint, fibre to the premises network architecture, with a single fibre-optic cable able to provide service to multiple premises. A passive optical splitter divides the signal from the exchange, normally between 32 and 64 individual houses and businesses. The fibre-optic cable coming in from the street connects to a modem at the premises, which converts optical signals back into Ethernet.

GPON technology can be used to provide both voice and broadband services. Bandwidth available allows many different media-rich services to be delivered at the same time with reliable service quality, over one fibre optic cable into the premises.

With the data being transmitted using digital pulses of light, performance is largely unaffected by distance. A home that is 30km from the exchange will get exactly the same speed as one located next door to the exchange.

The availability of fibre-based services is steadily growing, with fibre optic cable being laid directly to new homes in large suburban developments around New Zealand. Further information on availability is available on the Brightspark website.