Adtran’s Full Fibre Tech Powers 8.6 Million of Openreach’s UK Premises

Network technology firm Adtran has revealed that their Software-Defined (SD), open and disaggregated SDX Optical Line Terminal (OLT) platform now powers 8.6 million UK premises passed on Openreach’s (BT) new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, managed by Mosaic CP. This is said to reflect about 30% of their national full fibre network.

Openreach’s full fibre network has so far covered over 17 million premises (there are around 32.5m across the UK), but they aim to reach 25 million by December 2026 and have also expressed an ambition to reach “up to” 30 million by 2030. This is all being supported by a commercial investment of around £15bn.

Adtran is one of the strategic suppliers (since 2021) for this new infrastructure alongside Nokia, as well as Huawei if you include their legacy kit before the government restricted its use. The company boasts that their SDX platform “outperforms traditional architectures, reducing space by over 30% and cutting power consumption by 50%” compared to previous-generation OLTs, although Nokia could probably make a similar claim.

Openreach is currently known to be adopting this using a ComboPON approach to their network. This should make it easier for them to upgrade without needing to change all of the existing optical modems (ONTs) inside homes, which they’ve deployed via older GPON technology (e.g. they’ll be able to use either GPON or XGS-PON based ONTs, whatever the situation requires).

In fact, Openreach’s first 1Gbps symmetric speed broadband package using 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology is due to launch around April 2025, albeit only in some of Openreach’s contracted Project Gigabit areas (here).

Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology at Openreach, said:

“Extending our full-fibre network is a key step in our mission to build a faster, more reliable digital future for the UK. This expansion, with 5.2 million premises ready for service and 1 million connected customers using Adtran technology, is part of our long-term investment to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, moving from legacy copper to a robust, future-ready fibre network.

Our partnership with Adtran and its fibre access technology began with their data centre-inspired leaf-spine architecture, which has been instrumental in supporting our rollout that has already passed 17 million premises. This approach enabled us to efficiently connect more than 650 communication provider partners at scale across large cities, towns and rural areas throughout the UK.

Our network will be the backbone of the nation’s economy for decades to come, supporting millions more customers as we continue to expand across the country.”

Stuart Broome, GM of EMEA sales at Adtran, said:

“Openreach’s rollout is setting new benchmarks for speed and scale. Across its full FTTP network, Openreach has now passed 17 million premises, with our technology central to that growth. This deployment represents the largest and fastest rollout of our disaggregated SDX OLTs and switches to date. By integrating our SDX 6330 OLT featuring Combo PON technology and our comprehensive Mosaic CP management platform, Openreach is rapidly growing its fibre footprint while seamlessly preparing for XGS-PON. Our solution is designed to accelerate deployments, simplify operations and ensure a sustainable fibre infrastructure. We look forward to continuing our collaboration to connect millions more homes and businesses throughout the UK.”

The eagle-eyed may note the discrepancy above between how the announcement, on one hand, talks about a figure of “8.6 million premises” on Adtran’s OLT platform, while Trevor Linney then gives a differing figure of 5.2 million premises (this seems to be where the figure of 30% comes from). At least part of this is because the 8.6m figure is a “passed” footprint, while 5.2m is the ‘Ready for Service’ figure (i.e. where you can actually get the service installed on a completed / live network).

The announcement notes that Adtran’s SDX OLT technology is now helping support the acceleration of Openreach’s network build and “future deployment of ‘hyper-fast’ 10G broadband“. But for now the fastest package you can actually buy is 1.8Gbps and that only offers uploads of 120Mbps.