System and method for communicating optical signals between a data service provider and subscribers

Abstract

An optical fiber network can include an outdoor laser transceiver node that can be positioned in close proximity to the subscribers of an optical fiber network. The outdoor laser transceiver node does not require active cooling and heating devices that control the temperature surrounding the laser transceiver node. The laser transceiver node can adjust a subscriber's bandwidth on a subscription basis or on an as-needed basis. The laser transceiver node can also offer data bandwidth to the subscriber in preassigned increments. Additionally, the laser transceiver node lends itself to efficient upgrading that can be performed entirely on the network side. The laser transceiver node can also provide high speed symmetrical data transmission. Further, the laser transceiver node can utilize off-the-shelf hardware to generate optical signals such as Fabry-Perot (F-P) laser transmitters, distributed feed back lasers (DFB), or vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs).