Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rayiner 2927 days ago
Verizon upgraded to GPON in 2008, when prices were a lot higher. Back then, GPON line cards were in the $10-20k range. (And they're upgrading to NG-PON2 starting this year.) Also, their typical split is 1:16 or 1:32. So you're talking about $600+ per subscriber (maybe pushing a grand once you factor in cost new ONTs and cost of labor to install new ONTs). That's a couple of thousand dollars per subscriber over the amortization period (at least if you're hoping to keep up with the Joneses).
1 comments

Your numbers are way off.

In 2006, Verizon's cost to pass a property was $850 and trending towards $700 in 2010. This includes not only the outside plant, but also the OLTs. The majority of the cost is in the outside plant, so the GPON OLTs are only a fraction of this.

Verizon deploys at scale and does not pay list prices. Furthermore Verizon would not be deploying NG-PON2 if it wasn't profitable and would definitely not be doing it if it was cutting into their margins. Therefore there is no reason to assume their NG-PON2 costs will be higher than their GPON costs.