The way people use the Internet today creates a great demand for high bandwidth connectivity. Consumers watch multiple HDTV channels, often on several TVs in the same household and at the same time, while more and more people are telecommuting. People in homes are now able to upload and download multimedia files and use bandwidth-hungry peer-to-peer services more than ever before. They play online games that demand high speeds and immediate reactivity. Web 2.0-based communities and hosted services such as social networking sites and wikis are pervasive, fostering interactivity, collaboration and data sharing while generating a need for capacity.

Kenya Data Networks (KDN) CEO Kai Wulff notes that through its new homes bandwidth solution, Digz plus, the bandwidth for homes will be met. Residents of Runda estate have been enjoying Fibre to homes through Digz plus. Although there are other technologies that could provide fibre to homes, passive optical networks (PONs) like Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) are generally considered as the strongest candidate for widespread deployment upon which Digz plus operates.
KDN’s CEO says that one way of satisfying the hunger for bandwidth at home is by providing fibre to homes.

“Connecting optical fiber to every home is the definitive response to the huge demand for greater bandwidth. The (GPON) is one of the best ways of achieving this and KDN is providing this through Digz plus”.

Digz plus has a downstream capacity of 2.488 Gb/s and an upstream capacity of 1.244 Gb p/s that is shared among users. Encryption is used to keep each user's data secured and private from other users. Kai adds that Digz plus easily supports a mix of voice, video and data services, making it an ideal foundation for triple-play services.

“Unlike copper-based technologies, Digz plus doesn’t suffer from decreasing performance over distance, so subscribers located within 20 km of the centrally located optical line terminal (OLT) enjoy the same performance as those located next door,” says Kai.

Digz plus main characteristic is the use of passive splitters in the fiber distribution network, enabling one single feeding fiber from the KDN’s central office to serve multiple homes and small businesses.The technology can provide high-bandwidth services to smaller population centres that were previously too remote to meet the ROI requirements of large operators. Its ability to support mission-critical carrier and enterprise applications has been proven since the first commercial, full-rate GPON deployment in North America where the technology was launched in June 2006.

GPON upon which Digz plus rides on, is technology that leverages on fibre’s cost, which is comparable to that of copper. However, fibre is more cost-effective over the long run because it has ample headroom to support future services, while copper will never have the same capacity as fibre.