The Passive Optical Network (PON) equipment market in the Asia Pacific region is rapidly raising with the contribution from this market alone totaling 55 % of the global PON market.

A new research by Infonetics Research estimates that PON shipments in the region will double by2013 when compared to 2008 figures. .

Major markets in the region include China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of Asia Pacific as a group including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

"Asia Pacific is by far the most dynamic PON market in the world. The early BPON and EPON rollouts in Japan and South Korea are quickly being eclipsed by China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile''s extensive EPON and GPON rollouts for FTTB, FTTH, and mobile backhaul. Though EPON dominates Chinese deployments today, there is no question that the Chinese operators will deploy GPON. The only question is: how much?" said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and IPTV at Infonetics Research.

The PON market includes EPON, GPON and WDM-PON.

Observations from the region reveal that service providers are building PON-based FTTH and FTTB networks in an effort to offer faster, cheaper, more synchronous broadband connection. 

In terms of revenues, Alcatel-Lucent remains the market leader in the region. Countrywise, ZTE, Huawei and FiberHome dominate the huge Chinese market. Mitsubishi is the leader in Japan which is the largest market for PON in the region contributing for 49% of total revenue in the region. Btu China is expected to takeover this position from Japan.

EPON remains the largest revenue opportunity in the region but GPON is the fastest growing with revenues expected to grow by 139 % by 2013.