One embodiment of the disclosures made herein is a method for activating services in a Passive Optical Networking (PON) system. In accordance with such an embodiment, an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) within the PON system is pre-provisioned with PON services and with at least a portion of information required for facilitating automatic activation of the PON services. Pre-provisioning is defined herein to mean that such provisioning is performed prior to installing an ONT (i.e., a network interface device) that will serve such to services at the service subscriber's site and that is controlled by the OLT. After installation of the ONT is complete, the PON services served by the ONT are automatically activated using at least a portion of the pre-provisioned information and information discovered about the ONT during a post-installation discovery process. For example, to enable the PON services to be automatically activated after the ONT is installed, network element management software of the PON system is adapted to automatically check the ONT selected for installation against a database of legitimate units. After the installed ONT is verified as a legitimate unit, the PON services are automatically activated. By providing such an automated mechanism for supporting the activation of PON services at the ONT, resources utilization for performing various system management activities (e.g., provisioning at the central office, ONT install, etc) are advantageously reduced.