This article looks at GPON ONT UPS solutions, why you need them and what the solution is. GPON is the acronym for Gigabit Passive Optical Network and is used in “last mile” broadband distribution to provide “Fibre To The Home” or FTTH. Once in your home, the fibre is terminated with an Optical Network Termination device or ONT. If you want to read more about this then try this GPON Fundamentals, but seriously you don’t have to.
What GPON allows is seriously fast broadband into your home but there is a drawback – and it’s nothing to do with broadband, it’s to do with power.
In a typical broadband connection you have copper wires coming into your house. These wires carry a 50V supply which originates from the telephone exchange. This allows the ability to make (and receive) landline calls from your telephone service during a power outage. Essential during any emergency.
GPON however uses fibre optic cables. These cables are made from glass, and glass if you didn’t know is a very bad conductor of electricity (in fact a very good insulator) and so it is impossible to deliver power from the telephone exchange to your home or office. Of course, the result of this is that in the event of a power outage you are unable to make or receive any landline calls.
Depending upon circumstances this may not be too much of an issue. Mobile devices have largely removed the need for landline telephones, however in areas of poor signal quality the need for a landline is paramount.
What’s more, services such as Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp etc., will also fail as the GPON ONT will be without power and therefore your home or office without internet connection. As well as the fact that you would have to deal with restless children not being able to play on their tablet devices, workers twiddling thumbs etc., there is a more serious note in that you may be completely cut off from any form of communications.
An Uninterruptible Power Supply can provide back up power for just such an eventuality, and for 12V supplied ONTs the iPower is the ideal GPON ONT UPS solution. The iPower has a 12V 2.1A output and in most cases will replace the supplied power supply that came with your ONT. This means that the unit occupies no additional space and simply plugs into your device.
The iPower can provide up to an hour or more back up, depending upon the power requirements of the ONT, enough to protect against the majority of power cuts, or allow you to make an important emergency call in the event of something more serious. For longer runtimes the iPower-HD (coming soon) can provide hours if not days of runtime, or a standard AC system may suffice.
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