Effective user accommodation will be more and more important in passive optical networks (PONs) in the next decade since the number of subscribers has been leveling off as well and it is becoming more difficult for network operators to keep sufficient numbers of maintenance workers. Drastically reducing the number of small-scale communication buildings while keeping the number of accommodated users is one of the most attractive solutions to meet this situation. To achieve this, we propose two types of long-reach repeater-free upstream transmission configurations for PON systems; (i) one utilizes a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as a pre-amplifier and (ii) the other utilizes distributed Raman amplification (DRA) in addition to the SOA. Our simulations assuming 10G-EPON specifications and transmission experiments on a 10G-EPON prototype confirm that configuration (i) can add a 17km trunk fiber to a normal PON system with 10km access reach and 1 : 64 split (total 27km reach), while configuration (ii) can further expand the trunk fiber distance to 37km (total 47km reach). Network operators can select these configurations depending on their service areas.