Openreach to Boost UK Broadband and Ethernet Network with Nokia’s Altiplano UPDATE

Network operator Openreach (BT) has revealed that they’re gearing up to be one of the first to deploy Nokia’s Altiplano Access Controller cloud (SDN) platform across their open access full fibre (FTTP) broadband and Ethernet network. This could boost automation, network visibility + control, and product flexibility for both ISPs and end-users.

In simple terms, this is all about making their network easier to manage, more efficient, reliable (e.g. quicker to identify faults via automation) and also cutting some operational costs. The approach is similar to what Openreach are already doing on the Adtran side of their FTTP network with the Mosaic Cloud Platform (Adtran and Nokia are two of Openreach’s primary strategic network suppliers).

The development was officially confirmed by the operator’s Network Technology Director, Trevor Linney, who mentioned their plans during a speech last week at the Network X event in France. Trevor has since provided a bit more information to ISPreview (see below).

The new Altiplano deployment isn’t live yet (except in their labs), although their first live site using their next generation Ethernet Access Direct 2 (EAD2) product for businesses and UK ISPs is due to go live in April 2025 and a full product launch would then follow in 2026.

Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology for Openreach, told ISPreview:

“We are working on what we believe to be a world first deployment of the Altiplano access controller platform to enhance resilience and service in our fixed full fibre network.

This is the next step in our plans to build a future proof, multi-service, one network platform – that supports both full fibre FTTP and future ethernet products.”

We also put a few quick questions to Trevor about the new platform, which should help to add a bit of additional context.

What are the primary advantages of this platform vs the current approach?

• Today we use Nokia’s AMS platform for managing our Full Fibre FTTP network
• As we evolve to our new data centre inspired “leaf-spine-leaf architecture” we will use Altiplano to manage clusters of Nokia equipment
• These clusters will support FTTP and point to point Ethernet for EAD2 in either dedicated or shared configurations
• Altiplano’s abstraction capabilities and modern interfaces gives us the benefit of OSS simplification by leveraging the use of “intents” – asking Altiplano to configure an end to end services across the cluster, rather than our OSS needing to understand complex network topology and configure each individual component in cluster.
• It will also enable streaming telemetry giving us far greater insight into our network performance in near real time.
• It’s worth highlighting that we already have many of these benefits on our ADTRAN FTTP platform which will be further enhanced over the coming year.

Will this enable any new products that would have been difficult to do before?

• Our new EAD2 product leverages the new cluster headend architecture and integrates multiple Nokia product families together
• These clusters will enable higher speeds, use ~50% energy and up to 80% reduction in space compared to EAD1
• In future, we will also leverage these clusters for XGS-PON [FTTP] and potentially higher speed cablelink products

How long is the roll-out likely to take?

• Our Altiplano PoC is live in the labs, and our first live EAD2 site will land in April 2025 to support our network build ready for the product launch in 2026.

I note that Nokia last week enhanced the Altiplano Access Controller with AIOps to drive better network decisions. Will Openreach launch with that too?

• Today we are focused on enabling the underlying network technology, once this is in place we will look to exploit Altiplano’s more advanced features.

UPDATE 9:34am

Openreach weren’t particularly clear on which aspect of this would be a “world first deployment“, which is an issue because they’re not the only UK operator to be harnessing Nokia’s Altiplano platform. But the operator has clarified that this specifically refers to how they will be managing a cluster that includes the OLTs and the IP equipment – this has required Nokia to develop new capabilities.