Abstract – Like electricity and water, internet access has become a critical utility for the home or office. Distance learning and working from home during the COVID-19 Pandemic highlighted the challenges with the current technologies. Rural and urban locations need to get higher bandwidth, lower latency, and more reliable internet access. Copper access technologies are reaching their limits and the cell phone network doesn’t provide enough bandwidth for home and business applications. The world has embraced fiber optics and specifically Passive Optical Networks (PON) for the future of internet access. The technology used for past, current, and future internet access will be explored with a detailed look at the latest PON fiber technologies.
Mr. Edward Boyd is the Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of Tibit Communications. Tibit Communications is a Northern California startup company developing Pluggable Network Interface solutions including the world’s first Micro-OLT in an SFP form factor. Before Tibit, Ed was the CTO and Co-Founder of Teknovus, Inc before it was acquired by Broadcom in March of 2010. Mr Boyd was Senior Technical Director for Broadcom Corporation working on the Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) and Ethernet Protocol over Cable (EPoC) products before leaving to become a Co-Founder of Tibit. Mr. Boyd has more than 20 years of experience defining and developing ASICs for data communications, cable access networks, and telecom access networks. Mr. Boyd holds numerous patents in areas of cable modem, PON, and Ethernet networks. Mr. Boyd has been active in CableLabs, ITU-T (BPON/GPON), and IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet/EPON /EPoC) standards bodies.