Keynote 3

Summary form only given. Explosion of data and mass availability of Internet connections around the globe had created huge bandwidth requirements for bandwidth hungry applications. Despite the technological advances in the core and their ability to transport, still much work has to be done in the access networks in order to be able to let the broadband traffic be transmitted transparently. Current solutions for access networks do not provide a concrete solution for the famous last mile problem. In this talk we will present passive optical access networks as well as broadband wireless access networks as viable solutions to the ongoing problems in the broadband access networks. Further we will cover physical and technological limitations with the current state-of-the-art technology. We will address the optical as well as wireless broadband access networks promises in responding to these shortcomings. We will focus on passive optical networks (PONs), reviewing different type of PONs considering their benefits and limitations. We will also present an overview of broadband wireless access networks, such as WiMAX.