Several Passive Optical Network (PON) standards have been proposed as new architectures for delivering video, voice, and data to homes. PONs are being built in large numbers in Asia, and in increasing numbers in the Americas and Europe. Several cable operators are starting to deploy PONs in selected greenfield applications, typically in situations where required by the developer. This paper shows the most popular forms of PONs in use today. We compare the performance of the PONs, and talk about how and when one may want to consider PON architectures.