NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) today announced the provision of a 10 Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network (10G-EPON) system in support of KDDI Corporation's "au Hikari Home 10 giga," an FTTH service for individual subscribers.

"au Hikari Home 10 giga" is a new high-speed service that enables the world's fastest* upstream and downstream speeds of up to 10 Gbps.

NEC's 10G-EPON system consists of an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) installed within KDDI facilities and an Optical Network Unit (ONU) installed inside the homes of individual subscribers.

The small and high-density packaging of an OLT is only the size of a 4U 19-inch rack, yet it houses up to 8,192 ONUs, which helps to minimize the space required for telecommunications carriers to install them.

Moreover, the volume of an ONU has been reduced by about 65% compared to NEC's conventional products, helping to save installation space inside subscribers' homes as well as storage space for telecommunications carriers.

OLT

ONU

"The need for high-speed and large-capacity Internet is expected to continue rising with the sophistication and high-definition of content and the increase in mobile data traffic such as Wi-Fi offload. In addition to this 10G-EPON system for KDDI, NEC will continue to work on the development of optical access technologies that support the strengthening of telecommunications carrier services," said Kazuhiro Tagawa, Deputy General Manager, Network Solutions Division, NEC Corporation.

NEC will display its 10G-EPON system at Fiber Optics Expo 2018 (FOE 2018) to be held at Tokyo Big Sight from April 4 to 6, 2018.