I've made the same switch myself. PON is definitely easier. Everyone (including me) likes Ethernet when they're new at it because it seems more simple and familiar, but PON is easier to manage. I'd keep Ethernet around for enterprise stuff, but bulk tier3 services are better off on PON.
There was also a business case for Ethernet in a rural area where you might have small clusters of potential customers. You could add a 24 port or 48 port Ethernet switch a lot more cheaply than adding an OLT, but in the past decade you could also use Ubiquiti's UFiber in that same scenario. Or use XGS-PON where you can get long reach by adjusting min and differential range and minding your link budget. In that case you can look at it as the cost of adding ports on a central system vs the cost of adding a new point-of-presence. In other words, I think the tech based argument for Ethernet was at least partially wrong from the start, and the most compelling business case for it has evaporated. I also see Ethernet in open access networks where they put each provider in a VLAN and each ISP is just providing a router and customer service. I won't go on that rant today, but that model seems incredibly dumb in my eyes. -Adam On Mon, Oct 5, 2026 at 5:22 PM Nate Burke <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't have any PON in the field, only Active, but I'm curious why > you're converting your active network to a PON network? Network > Management? Future Scalability with existing fiber? What's driving the > switch. I'm genuinely curious. > > On 10/5/2026 3:53 PM, Jason McKemie wrote: > > I have an active optical network that I would like to convert to PON. > > Unfortunately, the connectors at the cabinet are all UPC. Am I asking > > for a headache if I connect those customers via an APC to UPC cable vs > > re-splicing everything at the cabinet? The lengths from the cabinet to > > the customer locations are all less than a mile. I'll be splicing on a > > new APC connector at the customer locations. > > > > -- > AF mailing list > [email protected] > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
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