Research Note
March 2024 Huawei and ZTE brighten up MWC 2024 with new products for optical transport and access
Abstract
LightCounting discusses highlights from MWC 2024
Barcelona is a truly charming city at the end of February, but MWC 2024 did not leave much time for sightseeing. It was packed with action and a crowd of 101,000 people attending the show. The mood at the show was sober, though, as the expectations that 5G would improve the business of the service providers have not materialized.
ZTE disclosed its first 800G pluggable CFP2 transceivers, which will be in production shortly (Q2 2024). The modules are designed to support a transmission distance of 2,000km over standard G652 fiber at 800G and can reach longer distances in 400G per wavelength mode.
ZTE also demonstrated on-board modules designed for 1.2T/wavelength transmission, which can also run at 800G and 400G per wavelength to support distances up to 5,000km. These are being deployed now by telecom operators in China and India. ZTE plans to have 1.6T solutions available in 2025.
Huawei released three new optical solutions at MWC 2024, including OSN 9800 K36, a DC-oriented OTN platform. It is scalable to up to 1.6T line cards, adding up to more than 100Tbps of capacity per chassis. China Mobile is already deploying it using 2x400G line cards with QPSK modulation. The company also offers 2x800G line cards and plans to have 1.6T/wavelength line cards.
Huawei also introduced a new intelligent OLT, MA5800T, supporting GPON, 10G PON and 50G PON. The company plans first deployments of this system with 50G PON in March 2024. The new OLT is designed to support 200G PON in the future, simplifying upgrades to faster connectivity. The new OLT has 2Tbit/s forwarding capability per slot, industry's first TDM+Ethernet dual-plane elastic forwarding architecture, and distributed computing engine.
Finally, Huawei announced the first FTTR+X product for all-optical smart homes, the iFTTR OptiXstar F50. The new FTTR package also includes a WiFi-7 router and up to 8T of storage. Current deployments of FTTR use GPON optics, and F50 supports XGS-PON access.
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