As Fibre to the Home (FTTH) becomes more widely available, the fixed broadband bandwidths offered by most operators have moved well beyond the gigabit level. However, the broadband experience for many consumers is still hampered by the inconsistent coverage and the poor quality of home Wi-Fi. This is because most people have chosen a Wi-Fi mesh solution for their indoor network, and most Wi-Fi mesh networks have no choice but to rely on wireless backhaul with no or low Ethernet coverage in home, resulting in poor quality of experience (QoE) for users.

AIROHA's latest FTTR (Fibre to the Room) solution, which uses a multifunctional home broadband gateway and invisible fibre to significantly reduce homeowners' resistance to surface cabling, simplify the complexity of deployment, bring fibre to every room in the house and provide full fibre coverage throughout the home/community at WAN speeds, ultimately delivering a higher QoE for users and a higher NPS (Net Promoter Score) for operators seeking to improve customer retention and reduce churn.

FTTR Has Become a Focus for Overcoming Network Bottlenecks: FTTR is the next step up from FTTH in addressing the speed bottleneck of indoor broadband, which is traditionally delivered over a wired Ethernet system or a wireless Wi-Fi mesh network. In many countries, for example in Europe, there are many old, beautiful houses that don't have a concealed conduit for modern internet cabling, while homeowners are concerned that all the drilling and boreholes associated with surface cabling would detract from the building or interfere with the interior layout, and the use of Wi-Fi routers to organize an indoor wireless network has become the most common practice for delivering broadband from the master FTTH gateway to the other floors and rooms in the building. However, Wi-Fi signals are susceptible to various sources of interference, easily blocked by brick or concrete walls, and their shared bandwidth is instantly halved by a cited router in the absence of wired backhaul, resulting in poor user experience and satisfaction.

New fibre materials and methods enable "pain-free" indoor deployment: The introduction of new fibre materials and fittings has opened up new deployment methods and opportunities for indoor fibre broadband, delivering multi-gigabit indoor connectivity and improved QoE. For example, invisible fibre, with its thin and flexible physical characteristics, can be installed in any corner of a home without the need for drilling and is more aesthetically pleasing due to its transparent materials that are almost invisible to the naked eye. Invisible fibre is becoming increasingly popular with homeowners looking to upgrade their internet speeds. In deployments, FTTR extends the fibre connection from the master FTTR unit to each room by using fibre and fibre routers that act as slave FTTR units instead of Ethernet switches or Wi-Fi repeaters. The fibre routers provide ubiquitous multi-gig coverage with both wired and wireless access points and can be extended to as many corners of a building as required without compromising throughput.

AN7581 10G-PON SoC provides the most flexible and market-ready FTTR gateway solution: Airoha Technology's AN7581 10G PON SoC is a breakthrough innovation and an ideal option for premium FTTR deployments as it integrates a Wi-Fi 7 and can incorporate an xPON OLT chip to realize an all-in-one CPE unit that can perform the functions of a master FTTR unit, AP router and optical distributor, with both fibre and wireless connectivity interfaces available in a single device. AIROHA's AN7581 is the first SOC that supports both P2MP (point-to-multipoint) and P2P (point-to-point) FTTR solutions with integrated network management capabilities when combined with the flexible/optional use of AIROHA Technology's Ethernet solutions. For example, in the scenario of a large apartment or multi-storey houses, AIROHA's P2P solution is capable of managing over 5 slave ONUs to distribute optical and Wi-Fi services to each of the building units. In the case of a larger project requiring more than 10 slave stations, AIROHA's P2MP becomes the perfect solution to reach a larger number of rooms within an apartment, or offices and classrooms within a company or campus.