Most recently GPON news have came to a standstill. It's unknown what will be of Unifi's FTTH network fate will be in the next few years.
1st quarter report for telecom wired news mentioned that both DSL and PON technologies saw a market decline.
While passive optical networks sales are still going strong as reported by both Huawei and ZTE, they are fueled by demands mostly in China's domestic market as infrastructures are still new over there. In China, the telcos are government owned and they keep their national interest by buying their own products to keep their local companies alive.
Even so, all the far east asian countries China, Japan and South Korea favors EPON(GEPON) over GPON which TM uses. The decision is due to its cost effectiveness and less complicated ethernet transport.
Here's the summary of the report:
QUOTE
1.The DSL, PON, and Ethernet FTTH equipment market reversed its small fourth quarter gain with a 2% decline in 1Q11, dipping to $1.96 billion worldwide.
2.The overall market's decline was led by a double-digit sequential drop in DSL infrastructure spending in all regions.
3.Despite the sequential declines, the DSL equipment market is up 36% year-over-year (1Q11 vs. 1Q10)
The worldwide PON market jumped 20% in 1Q11 over 4Q10, surpassing the $1.0 billion threshold for the first time ever.
4.Driven by the Chinese operators and sustained growth in Japan and Korea, worldwide EPON spending was up a whopping 46% in 1Q11 over 4Q10.
5.The North American GPON market should regain its momentum over the next few quarters, as Verizon re-initiates its FiOS buildout and Broadband Stimulus deployments continue. GPON tech dying?
Huawei and ZTE benefited the most from the Chinese operators' spending spree on EPON and GPON equipment this quarter, despite being equally hammered by the decline in spending on DSL equipment.
http://www.eeherald.com/section/news/nws201105257.html