Hitachi Communication Introduces New Line of ONUs for DePON Fiber Access Systems

Eight New Optical Network Units for EPON with Advanced Home Gateway Functions can be Managed by DOCSISTM OSSI and Support PacketCableTM Standards

Hitachi Communication Technologies America, Inc. (HCTA) the only vendor offering a comprehensive line of EPON, GPON, DePON™, MW-PON™, and RFoG equipment today announced a new line of Optical Network Units (ONU) for their DePON fiber access systems. The new ONUs leverage the low cost, high bandwidth available with PON while enabling cable service providers to keep their existing DOCSIS provisioning and management systems. The new products support voice, video, data and wireless services for creation of double play, triple play, and quad play subscriber bundles. Advanced software features in the new ONU family enable cable operators to offer high bandwidth data services along with voice and RF Video while preserving investments in CPE and existing management procedures.

EPON is becoming an important new technology for delivering high bandwidth, MEF-certified services for Enterprise, SMB, multi-tenant units, mobile backhaul and residential applications. These growth markets often require fiber access technology. Access fiber can be a significant cost component in the acquisition of these new customers. PON technologies were developed to reduce the amount of fiber needed for access and thereby reduce costs in this part of the network. More than 5 million SMBs and Enterprises are potential PON customers, and for mobile backhaul the percentage of fiber attached cell towers will increase from 70% today to more than 89% by 2013 according to industry analysts. EPON will be an important factor in these applications. The new Hitachi ONUs are designed to support this growth.

“We work closely with our MSO partners to define the right feature sets for these new devices,” said Dr. Yanming Liu, CMO for HCTA. “Our emphasis on advanced software functions enables the delivery of voice, video and data services for any business, residential or backhaul application. We know from our joint development work with customers that these features create new revenue opportunities service providers can rapidly leverage,” he continued.

To meet a wide range of applications the new ONUs comply with important industry standards and certifications including: IEEE, MEF, ITU-T, and CableLabs’ PacketCable™ Multimedia (PCMM) specification. The ONU family includes the following products:

• The Hitachi C-603/C603-MW are commercial units for double play applications. They have four Gigabit Ethernet ports for data traffic and two POTS interfaces to support advanced voice features.


• The Hitachi C-606/C-606-MW are commercial units also for double play applications. They have eight Gigabit Ethernet ports for data traffic and eight POTS interfaces to support advanced voice features.


• The Hitachi C-1403/C-1403-MW are commercial models for triple play applications. They have four Gigabit Ethernet ports for data traffic, two POTS interfaces to support advanced voice features, and one analog cable port for video transport.


• The Hitachi C-1503/C-1503-MW are commercial models for quad play applications. They have four Gigabit Ethernet ports for data traffic, two POTS interfaces to support advanced voice features, one analog cable port for video transport and one IEEE.11b/g/n WiFi interface.


• The Hitachi R-1403 is a residential model of the triple play device. It has a smaller form factor and plastic enclosure. The ONU has four Gigabit Ethernet ports for data traffic and two POTS interfaces to support advanced voice features along with one analog cable port for video transport.


• The Hitachi R-1503 is a commercial model of the quad play device in the smaller form factor and plastic enclosure. The ONU has four Gigabit Ethernet ports for data traffic, two POTS interfaces to support advanced voice features, one analog cable port for video transport, and one IEEE.11b/g/n WiFi interface.

These units support advanced gateway software and functions including: NATP, DHCP server, firewall, multicast, configurable QoS, L2/L3 VPNs, and WiFi. All features can be configured using existing DOCSIS OSSI management. They also give cable operators a new set of tools to increase their penetration of business accounts. They enable the creation of E-LAN, E-LINE, E-TREE, and E-VPLS services. These service definitions are the foundation of most business applications. Multiple input ports, WiFi, QoS, VLAN and other features give these customer premises devices the power and flexibility to meet business and residential service requirements.

Hitachi will be showing the new ONUs and their capabilities in booth #11123 at this year’s Cable-Tec Expo sponsored by the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers in Denver, Colorado, October 28 – 30.