Consortium claims 30x cut in FTTH power use

GreenTouch, a consortium of tech firms, academic and non-governmental research experts, has unveiled new technology it claims enables a 30-times reduction in the power consumed by fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks.

The consortium claims deploying its new Bit-Interleaved Passive Optical Network (Bi-PON) technology will offer a carbon footprint reduction equivalent to taking half a million cars off the road, based on predictions FTTH penetration will hit 142 million subscribers by 2016.

The technology uses a selective data processing technique to cut energy consumption by reducing the amount of processed data discarded by the network.

GreenTouch claims the new tech will become essential as the level of electronic processing increases in-line with deployments of 40G PON systems. When combined with the consortium’s first power-reducing technology – the Large-scale Antenna System – the set-up can boost energy efficiency by a factor of 25, it states.

Tech firms involved in the consortium include Alcatel-Lucent, China Mobile, Samsung, Swisscom and Huawei.