SAN FRANCISCO — With Verizon installing fiber-optic cable to more neighborhoods, some industry observers think that the era of the passive optical networks (PONs) is near.

A "Last Mile Options" panel at the International Solid State Circuits Conference here considered the pros and cons of PONs as a technology challenge to established cable or DSL technologies.

"The last mile technology is the next step in the evolution of the access network," said Larry DeVito, an Analog Devices Inc. fellow. "The opportunity is to offer a triple play of high-speed Internet, voice-over-IP and multichannel television to your home."

The hope here is that chip designers will evaluate silicon opportunites for each technology as novel IC circuit designs begin to emerge. Among the opportunities is HDTV, which requires six times more bandwidth than a standard-definition TV signal and is the leading driver to increase bandwidth on access networks.

Despite significant challenges from other high speed access methods, CableLabs' DOCSIS communications standard will continue to dominate the high-speed data market in North America, said Thomas Quigley, senior technical director at Broadcom. "DOCSIS 3.0 sets the stage for operators to move all their digital data transmission onto a common IP-based communications platform," said Quigley.

Denis Khotimsky, technical marketing manager at Motorola, claimed that major North American carriers are in various stages of implementing fiber-optic networks to the home, with Verizon leading the way. The company is rolling out its fiber-optic service called FiOS, with plans to add 3 million homes annually over the next few years to the 6 million homes already passed by the end of 2006, Khotimsky said.

AT&T is pursuing its own fiber-to-the-node strategy with fiber deployment in the Dallas area. Both broadband and gigabit PONs are sanctioned by the International Telecommunications Union.

Jun-ichi Nakagawa of Mitsubishi Electric said that GE-PON (Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network) has recently attracted attention as a way of exceeding 1Gbit/s for fiber-to-the-home systems. "GE-PON systems are being introduced into commercial networks in Japan," said Nakagawa.

Jrg Hauptmann, senior researcher at Infineon Technologies, said that while PON is used in new access networks offering very high bandwidth, DSL is reusing the billions of available twisted pairs installed for phone services.

Low-cost wireless is another alternative for "last mile" access, said Intel's Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, director of the Communications Circuits Laboratory. "The importance of wireless as an alternative source is being driven by the rapid adoption of new standards, like WiMax, the emergence of new standards activities in the millimeter-wave space and the dramatic improvements in cost/performance of CMOS wireless ICs," said Soumyanath.

In many emerging economies, wireless access removes the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades. That has made it an attractive choice for broadband connectivity. Soumyanath offered strategies for achieving high performance in various frequency bands and discussed the complementary digital processing technologies that enable low-cost, broadband systems.