Nokia Demo First UK Trial of 25G PON for 5G Backhaul with CityFibre

Nokia and CityFibre have teamed up in Glasgow (Scotland) to conduct the UK’s first successful demonstration of a trial that used their full fibre 25G PON kit to fuel backhaul capacity for a 5G mobile (mobile broadband) network, which was used for a holographic call between buildings, teleoperation of a robotic arm and 8K video streaming.

We first covered the emergence of symmetric speed 25G PON technology in November last year (here), which is often regarded as the next step in Passive Optical Network (PON) evolution. Back then Nokia said that the new technology can “co-exist with GPON and XGS-PON on the same infrastructure [this requires no changes to the outside plant], allowing [ISPs] to add 25Gbps in overlay without disrupting existing customer services.”

Since then, Openreach has also conducted trials of this and shown that it does indeed have the ability to push download speeds of 25Gbps (Gigabits per second) over a single optical fibre (here), which in the future could help to support much faster speeds via Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband networks and other services.

Now CityFibre and Nokia have joined forces to conduct their own trial of 25G PON at the University of Glasglow (Scotland 5G Centre), which ran on the exact same fibre as their existing XGS-PON powered service (i.e. co-existence of multiple wavelengths on the PON) and helped to provide the backhaul for an ultra low latency 5G mobile network.

The successful test, carried out on 18th November 2021, used the network for a series of simulations including a holographic call between campus buildings, teleoperation of a robotic arm (pictured) and 8K video streaming.

Matt Yarwood, Network Architect at CityFibre, said:

“Nokia and the University of Glasgow 5G Centre have demonstrated the ease at which CityFibre’s Full Fibre passive optical networks can scale and evolve to meet tomorrow’s technology requirements. This better-by-design approach to digital infrastructure means we can accommodate the low latency backhaul requirements of 4G & 5G mobile operators and enable the development of new and exciting high-bandwidth applications.”

Phil Siveter, CEO of Nokia UK, said:

“This trial has been hugely encouraging. 25G PON will be a game-changer with mission-critical 5G networks increasingly requiring more redundancy. And it’s proven it can be run on exactly the same fiber running XGS-PON traffic.”

Take note that, dependent on the optics chosen, 25G PON can support symmetrical bitrates (25Gbps in downstream and 25Gps in upstream) and asymmetrical bitrates (25/10). Naturally, CityFibre, much like Openreach before it, are keeping a close eye on emerging technologies for when the time comes to upgrade.

CityFibre are of course in the process of investing £4bn to ensure that 8 million premises – across 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – are covered by their FTTP broadband network by the end of 2025 (here). So far, they’ve already completed their initial rollout to 1 million premises.