Though Verizon Communications has pledged to start deploying gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) gear this year, most of the PON equipment it deploys next year will probably be lower speed broadband PON (BPON), according to Krish Prabhu, chief executive officer of Tellabs, Verizon’s primary BPON supplier.

“The bulk of 2007 is going to be BPON,” Prabhu said at an investor conference this week, emphasizing that it was his own opinion, not a report on Verizon’s plans. “2008 is when we’ll start seeing GPON in a big way, and 2007 will still be acceptance of the technology and working the technology into the network.”

In recent months, some industry analysts began to suspect a slower transition to GPON. In late September, Lehman Brothers analyst Marcus Kupferschmidt predicted Verizon would deploy BPON to at least 2 million homes next year. That’s a third of the number of total homes the carrier expects to have passed at the end of this year.

Nearly three years after Verizon began its current BPON deployment, Prabhu said, “We’re just hitting a good stride with BPON. Based on [optical network terminals (ONTs)] we’ve shipped, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of customers. Last year that number was half an order of magnitude less.”

Tellabs has shipped a total of more than half a million ONTs this year, he said.

Though GPON offers much faster bandwidth speeds than BPON at comparable prices, perhaps one reason there is less urgency to deploy GPON is because, at present, a GPON deployment would not offer new services unmatched by BPON. However, that that could change as IPTV service matures, Prabhu said. “Until you get IPTV as a service that is very important and needs to be rolled out in big way, a pressing need to go from BPON to GPON will have to be not service-related.”

Verizon completed lab testing of Tellabs’ central office GPON product, the 8865 optical line terminal, in recent weeks and plans to begin deploying it in first office applications near the end of this year, Prabhu said.