An optical network communication system utilizes a passive optical network (PON) and includes an optical line terminal (OLT) having a downstream transmitter and an upstream receiver, and an optical network unit (ONU) having a downstream receiver and an upstream transmitter. The downstream transmitter is configured to provide a coherent downlink transmission, and the downstream receiver is configured to obtain one or more downstream parameters from the coherent downlink transmission. The system further includes a long fiber configured to carry the coherent downlink transmission between the OLT and the ONU. The ONU is configured to communicate to the OLT a first upstream ranging request message, the OLT is configured to communicate to the ONU a first downstream acknowledgement in response to the upstream first ranging request message, and the ONU is configured to communicate to the OLT a second upstream ranging request message based on the first downstream acknowledgement.