Nokia and Belgian broadband provider Proximus are claiming the world’s first deployment of 25 GPON technology. The companies sent traffic at more than 20 Gbps in a demonstration over a 25 GPON network during a May 26 media event in Antwerp, Belgium.

The demonstration used the 25G PON network to link the Havenhuis building in the port of Antwerp with Proximus’ central office in the middle of the city.

Nokia’s 25G PON platform includes Lightspan access nodes, 25G/10G optical cards and fiber modems. The Lightspan FX and MX are high-capacity access nodes that are optimized for massive scale fiber rollouts, Nokia says. These nodes sit in the central office, aggregate traffic collected from thousands of users and send it deep into the network. The nodes support GPON, XGS-PON, 25S-PON and point-to-point Ethernet.

Nokia optical network termination devices (ONTs) – fiber modems – are at the user locations.

“Ten years ago our companies launched the technology which enabled a switch to HD TV,” Federico Guillén, the President of Network Infrastructure for Nokia, said  in a press release. “Today we make history again with a network that is 200x faster. We are proud to support Proximus in enabling the world’s first 25G PON network, powered by Nokia’s Quillion chipset, which supports three generations of PON technologies.”

The move highlights the pace at which broadband is accelerating. Just a few years ago 1 Gbps was assumed to be an “extreme” speed tier. It’s remarkable that we’re now discussing 25G as attainable.