Optical fiber: Orange promises speeds of 10 Gb/s soon

Do you feel restricted by the speeds offered by current optical fiber? Good news, Orange has big plans and will offer 10 Gb/s in the coming months.

Do you know the acronym XGS-PON? No ? However, it could well change your daily life in the near future. Behind this somewhat barbaric pile of letters is in fact a new optical fiber technology that Orange is currently deploying and testing. Theoretically, it should make it possible to achieve speeds of 10 Gb/s, i.e. a speed “four to eight times faster than G-PON fiber», explains Thomas Gosselin, innovation director at Orange.

A Livebox 7 required for 10 Gb/s

To benefit from such speeds, you will have to be patient and fortunate, however. In fact, the historic operator is committed to “have 30% of customers eligible for XGS-PON by the end of 2024” And “100% end of 2026“. As Livebox 7 is the operator’s only terminal compatible with this new standard, you will also need to subscribe to a Livebox Max offer at €57.99 per month. Enough to cool the ardor of even the most bandwidth hungry.

Orange sells its new solution as an essential building block for the development of uses “around augmented/virtual reality and the metaverse” which are “applications demanding in terms of throughput and latency.» But that’s not all, the operator also wants to respond to more contemporary problems and satisfy “teleworkers who exchange large files or videos, and gamers downloading digital games“.

Orange therefore wants to make fun of Free which offers an 8 Gb/s offer via the 10G-EPON standard. The historic operator would go even further than its competitors who already use XGS-PON, since both SFR and Bouygues promise speeds of only up to 8 Gb/s. However, there remains the painful question of eligibility.

What about deployment promises?

Because if Orange is committed to massively deploying this standard over the next two years, this is not the first time that the operator has made promises that it cannot keep. Recently, the company was fined 26 million euros for non-compliance with its fiber deployment commitments.

An agreement, which now provides fiber coverage to 98.5% of homes in moderately dense areas and 96% of homes in very dense areas, was reached with the government, but such commitments had already been made, then denounced. by Orange. To see how the company combines its legal obligations with its desire for innovation.

Source : Orange