An optical access network with centralized digital optical line termination OLT including an optical line termination unit having a digital transmitter and a coherent receiver for downstream signal transmitting and upstream signal receiving, and at least one optical network unit ONU with transceiver functions for communicating with the OLT over an optical path, the ONU including intensity modulation and single photodiode detection, wherein the digital transmitter includes digital signal processing DSP, digital-to-analog conversion DAC and analog-to-digital conversion ADC functions that can be shared by all multiple ones of the ONU in the network, the DSP reducing or removing dispersion and non-linearity effects in the network and the coherent receiver enabling performance of the downstream stream signal transmitting to match that of the upstream signal receiving in the OLT.