Optical network terminals, the customer premises gear in fiber-to-the-premises networks, are increasingly moving from outside the home to indoors, as more equipment vendors offer that option.

Zhone Technologies is the latest to offer an indoor ONT, with its new active Ethernet gear. Zhone's zNID gateway combines the functions of an ONT with a broadband home router, using Wi-Fi to distribute bandwidth throughout the home. (Tellabs and Zhone have both looked to unnamed partners for indoor ONTs. One U.S. firm that makes them is TXP, which acquired Siemens' ONT business in 2006 and works with Tellabs on cabinet retrofits. Adtran has agreed to sell TXP's ONTs with its as-yet-unannounced gigabit passive optical network gear.)

As recently as last summer, TXP execs told Telephony that U.S. carriers weren't yet comfortable with indoor ONTs, as they restricted access by technicians, forcing them to make appointments with homeowners for maintenance.

But Verizon is deploying indoor ONT/routers today as it pushes into multidwelling units. And the carrier is already looking for new generations of the gear. In February, Vincent O'Byrne, technology director for Verizon, said he hoped to see greater integration in indoor ONTs and perhaps alternatives to the lead-acid batteries inside. Though indoor ONTs are currently around 10 to 20 inches across, Verizon is hoping future versions will be even smaller, around 8 square inches. When ONTs move inside the home, their visual aesthetics become more important to customers, O'Byrne said. The less they are seen and noticed, the better.