The Viodi View newsletter has published additional commentary on Immenstar, the US-Chinese EPON chip startup. The focus of the commentary is Immenstar’s OLT chip 4 port capability. Here’s some tidbits:

-This [4 ports] could lead to more densely packed OLTs for central offices. Having four ports also creates a built-in redundancy, as traffic can be shifted to a different port if something goes wrong. 

-The company also demonstrated interoperability with prototypes that used their competitors chip sets (which do not include the switching functionality).

- While ImmenStar’s current efforts are on gaining EPON design wins, they are also developing GPON chips in preparation for future telco deployments.

A somewhat dissenting view is given by commenter "Glen K." following a post in Nyquist Condition:

Statistical multiplexing across 4 OLTs may have some advantages, but it falls short to stat-muxing across all OLTs in a shelf. …I think the main driver for quad OLT is cost reduction and increase in port density. This, however, should be approached as an optimization problem. Increasing OLT integration increases number of subscribers that would be affected by a blade mulfunction/replacement/reset.