Netomnia Deploys 800G Gigabit Ready ROADM Network Across UK
One of the UK’s largest alternative full fibre broadband operators, Netomnia (inc. retail ISPs Brsk and YouFibre), has deployed a Smartoptics ROADM-based core network across the UK that should deliver scalable IP over DWDM at 100G and 400G wavelengths and is even classed as being “800G-ready by design” (800Gbps if you prefer).
Just for some context. Netomnia’s 10Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network currently covers 2.4 million UK premises (RFS) and has connected 310,000 customers (here). But they’re also aiming to expand their network to reach 3 million premises by the end of 2025 and then 5 million by the end of 2027 (inc. 1 million customers by 2028).
However, today’s announcement is more focused on the core network that underpins the aforementioned deployment, which needs a lot of capacity in order to support that connectivity to connect a rapidly rising number of homes and businesses. The company is thus connecting existing hubs around London, Manchester and Wales into a ring network using its own Dark Fibre.
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As part of the above, Netomnia has chosen to deploy Smartoptics’ flexible 34-degree ROADMs (Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer) – managed with the SoSmart software suite, variable gain amplifiers and coherent optics, the 800G-ready network supports any-to-any high-speed services. For those unfamiliar with this, a ROADM is a device that dynamically manages the routing of optical signals (wavelengths) within their network.
“Netomnia’s new national ROADM network enables near-unlimited capacity while reducing dependence on external providers,” said the announcement.
Sam Defriez, Director of Networks at Netomnia, said:
“Investing in our own dark fibre and equipment was the clear long-term choice, with projected savings of millions compared to leased lit capacity over five to seven years. Smartoptics stood out with no licensing fees for alien wavelengths, a compact footprint, and 800G-ready ROADMs that are easy to manage with the SoSmart controller.
The solution outperformed more complex and restrictive alternatives. Deploying a national network could have been complex and challenging, but thanks to Smartoptics’ intuitive platform and strong support, the rollout felt easy from the start.”
The move complements YouFibre’s recent decision to do other things, such as becoming the first ISP to take a 400G (Gbps) port at the London Internet Exchange’s (LINX) regional interconnection hub in the North – LINX Manchester (here). Not to mention Netomnia’s now imminent plans to launch broadband products based off the cutting edge 50G PON standard (here), which in practice is likely to make broadband speeds of around 40Gbps+ via FTTP viable.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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They are absolutely smashing it
The BT fan boys, and chief shareholder, BT Ivor, will not like this news. They will be thinking of a statement to make on here….
Probably won’t care. Perfectly possible to promote something, if they want to promote, without piling in on the competition with negativity.
They are indeed smashing it.
I’ve heard Openreach have achieved massive cost reductions since they started living rent free in anonymous’s head.
Just waiting to see who hits the Terabit first.
Why is Netomnia doing this instead of covering my house!!! Why haven’t they finished Liverpool
They’ll build where they also see demand, so get everyone on your street to sign up
They did my street in Liverpool back in february and it has been sheer bliss since. 2Gbit symmetric is a joy.
Yeah, unfortunately they also don’t exist in York
Great to see YouFibre and Netomnia rolling out shiny new 800Gb dark fibre.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we’re still trying to figure out how a bit of “maintenance” a couple of weeks ago managed to break previously perfect upload speeds and turn a rock-solid 3ms ping into something five times higher.
Maybe focus on fixing what’s already lit before laying more dark.
Its not all great news. In the last couple of weeks many users have been notified of “essential maintenance” in their area on the YouFibre network, after this “maintenance” has been completed there has been a marked increase in latency, and significant reductions in upload speed.
Whatever this “maintenance” is (suspect it is linked to this change of altering their infrastructure), is actually degrading the end user experience. Latency on YouFibre is now worse than that achieved on other providers FTTC and copper products.
Upload latency is significant, and speeds struggle to now meet their minimum service levels, 2Gbps now maxing out at 1600Mbps, sometimes as low as 500Mbps. There appears to have been zero testing (or at least zero concern for customer impact) before making these changes.
Check reddit discussions on Youfibre for discussions on the service degradatio since changes started being made around mid May.
Its crazy to see people praising this. This is a disaster for any YouFibre customer who cares about latency. This process has added a good 15ms latency to every ping, with frequent lag spikes and jitter. I had far better ping before I moved to full fibre. Latenct from Kent to Lond (less than 50 miles) has now increased from 3ms to 15-19ms. You can see many others are affected. Tech support is stonewalling customers telling them that any ping increase of less than 100 ms wil not be investigated. Time to move to open reach I guess.
Following tech support reaching out, this is resolved for me now