JANUARY 20 — Telekom Research & Development Sdn Bhd (TM R&D) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ZTE (Malaysia) Corporation to collaborate on optical network research to introduce the first 50Gbps bandwidth experience to Malaysia. Both TM R&D and ZTE will jointly explore the capabilities of 50GPON to support various applications and use cases that can deliver ultra-broadband access to the government, enterprises and consumers, as well as the requirements of innovative services including 5G, Cloud Virtual Reality and industrial intelligent manufacturing.
TM R&D CEO Dr Sharlene Thiagarajah said “TM R&D is committed to conducting research on future technologies and innovating new value-added smarter eco-systems that will improve the quality of user experience, and ultimately bring a positive impact on their lives. This fits well into the TM Group’s transformation towards becoming a human-centred TechCo. We are very excited to partner with a renowned global player such as ZTE to innovate on future generation PON technology in line with the global trend and technology roadmap.”
Commenting on the MoU, ZTE Malaysia CEO Steve Ge said “With Gigabit home broadband services widely used in Malaysia at present, and the basic fixed network is in the time window of evolution from GPON to 10G PON, this partnership could not have come at a better time.” He added, “ZTE is pleased with the opportunity to collaborate with TM R&D on future research in the next-generation PON technology supporting Digital Malaysia.”
At the moment, Time is the first to commercially deploy 10GPON in Malaysia which enables higher fire broadband speeds beyond 1Gbps. This comes three years after Time signed an MoU with Huawei for a 10GPON pilot. While Time’s network is capable of supporting fibre speeds of up to 10Gbps, it is currently offering 2Gbps as its highest fibre option for RM379/month.
TM currently only offers a maximum of 800Mbps for its fibre broadband plans. With 50GPON, Telekom Malaysia will be able to provide even higher speeds of up to 50Gbps on its fibre network. As shown in their demo test above, they are able to achieve over 43Gbps for download and over 21Gbps for upload. It is worth highlighting that consumers and businesses would need the necessary 50GPON hardware to take full advantage of ultra-high bandwidth.
In May 2022, ZTE introduced the world’s first 50G PON and WiFi 7 Optical Network Unit (ONU) prototype. The ZTE ZXHN F9746Q can support asymmetric 50GPON technology with 50Gbps download and 20Gbps upload. The hardware itself has a 50G Ethernet optical port and it also uses MediaTek’s Filogic WiFi-7 chip to for multi-gigabit wireless connection. The MediaTek WiFi 7 chip can support four spatial streams in 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands, capable of delivering a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 19Gbps. — SoyaCincau
