An Optical Line Termination (OLT) system in a multi-wavelength Passive Optical Network (PON) includes a protection port for protecting a set of OLT ports without the use of a physical switch. The protection port has a tunable transceiver. The OLT system detects a failure of one of the OLT ports, which was originally adapted to transmit downstream traffic to a subset of ONUs on a downstream wavelength and to receive upstream traffic from the subset of ONUs on an upstream wavelength. In response to the detection, the OLT system tunes the protection port to the downstream wavelength for transmission and to the upstream wavelength for reception, and resumes communication between the OLT system and the subset of ONUs through the protection port instead of the OLT port.