Allied Telesyn today said it has deployed the world’s first Gigabit Ethernet PON in a commercial network, activating its integrated Multiservice Access Platform (iMAP) platform with Kansas independent telco Twin Valley Telephone. The platform, which is compliant with the 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile standard, is being used to support 13 new exchanges Twin Valley will acquire next month and in March from Sprint.

Like its predecessors APON, BPON and GPON, the last of which is still in a fairly experimental stage, GEPON operates as a point-to-multipoint architecture. Unlike those other technologies, though, GEPON support Ethernet speeds and format immediately. But while the architecture can support 100 Mb/s per subscriber, more typical deployments are around 32 Mb/s. Additionally, GEPON can support a transition to an active Ethernet architectures, which is attractive to smaller carriers, said James Mustarde, vice president of marketing for Allied Telesyn.

“Some existing customers who have been deploying DSL are also now deploying passive FTTH with plans to upgrade all those to active,” he said.

Twin Valley, which has been among the more aggressive independents) in the past few years, will use the iMAP to support both active and passive protocols. Using a 36-month rollout schedule that began in December, the telco will use the platform to provide voice, high-speed data and video to more than 6,400 subscribers as it expands its territory from 850 square miles to more than 2400 square miles.

Each iMAP service module consists of two Gigabit Ethernet fiber ports and supports up to 64 subscribers per OLT line card. The company also is announcing today that its has developed 10 gigabit Ethernet capability for the iMAP, positioning the platform as an aggregation device for T1/E1 and 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet access.

“If you’re doing full blown triple play, and you want to backhaul a load of traffic than putting in 10 gig blades allows you to scale your network,” Mustarde said. “Ten gig is a lot of pipe, but you don’t want to start building these networks and be creaking for bandwidth.”

At the subscriber end, the vendor’s ONU terminal supports six 10/100 LAN connections for data and video services as well as integrated voice-over-IP based phone ports for connecting up to 4 standard phones.

Like some other access vendors focused on the PON market, Allied Telesyn also is developing plans for VDSL2 blades. “VDSL technology is tremendously compelling in the short term,” Mustarde said.