MDU – Multi Dwelling Unit EPON ONU’s
MDU – Multi Dwelling Unit EPON ONU’s – are ONU’s that usually will serve more than one subscriber, more than one home and unlike of SFU – Single Family Unit ONU, will be usually deployed at apartment building, a condominium complex or at the curbside – that is a scenario sometimes called FTTB or FTTC. And while in SFU case it maybe was different, then at MDU case ONU is always considered as part of telecommunication network, and users never buy it separately. So, operator will not just take responsibility to invest in it, but also maintain, manage and what is more important – find power source for it.
Depending on a country and ISP size, MDU’s will usually connect from 8 to 24 subscribers, so, smallest MDU ONU you can think of is for example this Fiberbit’s 8 port ONU:
Figure 1: MDU – Multi Dwelling Unit EPON ONU’s with 8 Fast Ethernet ports
Now, from this ONU last meter cables – usually UTP can be installed to connect subscriber WiFi routers, PC’s or HGU’s.
It is worth to mention though, that alternative subscriber loop technology is also DSL. When last drops are not too long, then preferred form of DSL is ITU-T G.993.2 VDSL2, and then operator can also consider to offer POT’s services to endusers. Another benefit of such is that existing telecom operators who want to upgrade their DSL networks to FTTx still can use telephone-grade old installed cables and put DSL modems at the end of such cables.
VDSL in this case is pretty fast – 10 Mbit/s and even 100 Mbit/s sometimes is achievable.
