CityFibre Hints at Future Plans for 100Gbps UK Broadband Network in 2030s
Network operator CityFibre, which has already deployed their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across around 4.5 million UK premises, recently indicated to Mobile Europe’s Digital Telco event that they would be looking to upgrade to 50G-PON or 100G-PON during the early to mid 2030s.
The operator, which has long aspired to reach 8 million premises (c.30% of the UK) and just secured a major £2.3bn funding boost to fuel its plans for wider market consolidation (here), only recently completed an upgrade from their legacy G-PON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) to XGS-PON (Symmetric 10Gbps PON) technology – a process that took roughly two years after starting in the Spring of 2023 (here).
The new XGS-PON network is already being supported by faster multi-gigabit wholesale tiers for ISPs and consumers, such as the 2.5Gbps (symmetric) speed tier that first launched in 2023 (here) and the 5.5Gbps product that joined it in June 2025 (here). One of the first UK broadband providers to offer the top 5.5Gbps tier recently became Sky Broadband (here).
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As usual, the catch here is that harnessing such speeds online is still rather tricky for domestic connections, particularly since it’s already difficult to max out a 1Gbps line via most online services (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver 1Gbps), although some platforms (e.g. Steam, Microsoft) are catching up. Mind you, it wasn’t so long ago that we were saying the same thing about 100Mbps packages or 1-2Mbps before that etc.
However, the forward march of technology waits for no man, and CityFibre, as well as other operators (e.g. Netomnia recently became the first to introduce a 50G-PON network – here), are already looking beyond XGS-PON. According to CityFibre’s Chief Technology Officer, David Tomalin, the operator has developed a “15 to 20 year rolling plan for PON technologies” to support their wholesale ISP clients and ensure they remain competitive.
David Tomalin said (credits TelcoTitans):
“The ability to move from GPON to XGS-PON: we’ve overlaid that in a twelve-month period because we can quickly upgrade the network to do that, and then we plan for the 2030s — mid-2030s, early-2030s — to move to 50G or 100G PON. Again, it’s going to be the same sort of twelve-month migration period, if we decide to do it.”
According to CityFibre’s own statements, the GPON to XGS-PON upgrade actually took twice as long as David suggests above (starting in May 2023 and finishing in mid-2025), which is also excluding their initial pilot in York. But it’s reasonable to believe that the main bulk of this work (migration) took place during 2024-2025 and the learnings they’ve taken from that could result in a more rapid roll-out of future technologies.
At this point it’s important to stress that such upgrades aren’t just about delivering faster speeds to consumers and the obvious marketing benefits of being able to promote faster packages than the incumbent(s), particularly Openreach and Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre). The adoption of something like 50G-PON can also make managing the network and its capacity more cost-effective, particularly as the network fills up with customers.
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David does however appear to be undecided on their exact technology choice for the future, which we suspect may be partly subject to how quickly the network grows its coverage and take-up over the next few years. Not to mention the maturity of commercial 50G or 100G PON products. Currently 50G PON suppliers have only just started to push related products into the market and network operators also have to ensure that they can feed this with plenty of data capacity.
Naturally other network operators will be making similar plans, although we don’t usually hear them talking about such things in public so early on.
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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“As usual, the catch here is that harnessing such speeds online is still rather tricky for domestic connections. Mind you, it wasn’t so long ago that we were saying the same thing about 100Mbps packages or 1-2Mbps before that etc.” Very true, but as speeds increase the laws of diminishing returns will start to bite with each increase in speed bringing about a smaller perceived benefit.
I’m holding out for a Terabit connection 🙂 Said the man on a 20 Mbps FTTC.
I’m still waiting for CityFibre 1Gbps. They did a big article in the Bolton News about 4 years ago saying the town would be “Blanketed with fibre”….I’m still waiting! I live near the town centre, so god help those further out.
I doubt consumers will ever hear about the term ’50G PON’ as it would be utterly confusing when that speed is shared with upto 32 homes
Using your wisdom, tell us the BT split ratio on legacy GPON then, seeing as you are slating 50PON?
Well, if they want to stay one step ahead in disrupting their competitors’ businesses this is the way to do it. Once you get to then end of your contract, if you see one provider is going to offer you 8gb and another will offer you 2.5gb for the same, or more or only slightly less, the customer is likely to see the higher number and think why would I pay that for something that’s only a quarter as fast.
I’m just plucking figures, it could easily be 25gb vs 8gb or something else. I’m in the situation with VM that they have always wanted to keep me on the ~500mb plan to keep my renewals low but now I can get 900mb+ from OR providers for less than I’m currently paying. I shall not be sticking with them now that I have a choice and if CityFibre eventually get around to covering me (they stopped halfway up the road at the end of my road 18 months ago) I shall switch again (and probably stick at that point).
You’re forgetting that most people can’t tell you the difference between FTTC and FTTP (or even between WiFi and broadband), let alone give you a grasp of what those speeds actually mean. They’re far more likely to stick with the brands they always have done.
Meanwhile, at Openreach headquarters: Why would anyone need an upload speed faster than 100 Mbps?
Well apparently they don’t – how else are Openreach managing to achieve industry leading takeup even in areas with competition.
People on here will continue to gripe about their use of GPON and asymmetric tiers but it seems to be working fine for them. Their recently issued STIN on XGS and new symmetric tiers suggests they’ll be fully ISPreview comment section approved soon enough.
@Ivor Don’t get your hopes up, whatever Openreach do it won’t be right for some people.
You mean like yearly inflation busting in contract price increases from BT or EE or Plusnet 😉
Now, BT Ivor, your clever wording did not go undetected. The symmetric tiers you refer to are actually different priced upload tiers. Unlike most of the mighty, super powered, rose smelling ALTNETS that just do one tier per download speed, i.e. upload equals download and is available now not in months or years after endless trials and pilots using XGS-PON or in Netomnias case, 50PON.
I know you know this, but I’ll keep repeating it anyway. Openreach offers what the market wants. Lots of customers don’t care about speed and those tiers fit the bill nicely, saving OR a nice chunk if it can be delivered on cost-effective battle-hardened GPON. The symmetric obsessives will – presumably soon – be able to get their 3G/3G XGS if they want it.
Netomnia have “deployed” 50GPON to a literal handful of customers solely for PR purposes. It isn’t a product that any customer can have at any location as far as I know.
It is just as insignificant as when Openreach said they were doing 50GPON to a customer in the Ipswich area (which just so happens to be the location of BT/OR’s primary R&D centre). Who said I can’t be critical of the BT Group?
Given that Youfibre users have had non-existent IPv6 for some time owing to an an alleged OLT bug, one wonders if that company has its priorities straight. It certainly proves why OR likes to test and trial. No such issues for them.
FANNY_VERIFY: Netomnia has changed their whole network to 50PON as covered in here previously. They just do not offer products over 8gbps as yet.
Netomnia also had ipv6 for a while. Yes Jeremy said they were testing an olt firmware update for an issue that was in some of their areas, not all. Even I support BT testing firmware before release. The difference is BT take months of trials and Netomnia will test and roll out once they know it fixes an issue.
FANNY says: Happy with XGS-PON as a minimum, don’t always have to chase the latest ultra speed PON, as domestic has a ceiling for speed for some time. This offers full symmetric capability over a product chosen by the incumbent which would clearly struggle offering every subscriber symmetric. Also, not as green as XGS-PON in terms of energy use.
Nothing on here claiming Netomnia have 50GPON lit across their network and absolutely no chance they have. It would be insane to do that.
‘CityFibre – who undercut their competitors by focussing on less than 1-in-3 properties – today made vague aspirations designed to deflect attention from their slowing build rates and eye watering losses…’
There. Fixed it. 😉
Don’t forget, every press release CityFibre put out must be viewed through the prism of remembering that they deliberately plan on ignoring 70% of the UK (unlike an oft-knocked but only truly national supplier), and might very well not be around in their current form in ten years time due to the amount of cash they are still hemorrhaging.
In my area we don’t have an Altnet available, VM, and the ISPs from the Openreach build only at this time. l personally would not be interested in VM whatsoever. City Fibre are very unlikely to pass this way at any stage. I would like to see Netomnia build here for a bit more choice. Like as has been said, Altnets usually don’t cover a whole district, so that is the problem, if they were to come to this area, would i get the opportunity or be bypassed.
Yes, we get it. You are upset and bitter and want to vent, because Cityfibre did not cover your address, and you had to make do with a legacy GPON asymmetric service from BT with yearly inflation busting price increases.
Cool – though it would be really nice even to have 0.3Gbps fibre, before I personally worry about a crazy future 100Gbps service! That’s going to be an expensive home network upgrade…
There are two reasons, I can think of, for offering 50 or 100G PON; Business customers may want to utilise higher bandwidth links, or they want to provide service to far more premises on a single Fibre. Most large businesses require fast SLA’s and possibly secure communication not available on a shared PON service, encryption isn’t a panacea for security.
To gain an idea of 100G capacity, you’re looking at the capacity of a single channel on a transAtlantic subsea cable, so a large network offering 100G PON would be more of a marketing ploy than a serious offering imo, since thousands of properties utilising even close to 10Gb capacity would break the capacity limits of Backhaul and Core Networks.
Encryption is fine for security, PON being shared isn’t a consideration for pretty much any business from a security point of view: they don’t trust anything implicitly from their WAN port on regardless of media.
The only way to avoid sharing a link at some point close to site is to lease dark fibre between your sites. That’s insanely expensive and mostly totally unnecessary, it’d be done to connect datacentres and hardly likely to use PON for those.
Polish Poler I agree with you when it comes to small businesses like opticians, or other small businesses where security is less of an issue, but they don’t need particularly fast broadband anyway; When it comes to large companies and Enterprise business, I think you’ll find those businesses would pay for standalone dedicated links for the extra reliability, security and enhanced SLA offered. Would companies like BAE, Rolls Royce, or Banks be happy to use shared PON links? I don’t think so.
With things like Harvest now Decrypt later being an issue, any big business wouldn’t contemplate using a shared insecure system like PON. If you want an example of where I’m coming from, just look at the developments taking place in technologies like Quantum Key Distribution and the building of Quantum secured metro networks; Clearly any big business who takes security seriously and wants fast SLA’s, wouldn’t dream of using PON for their connectivity.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that actual leased lines will disappear, but there’s a market for people who have outgrown “business internet” but don’t have leased line needs nor budgets.
At the very high end of that segment, perhaps it makes sense to offer them their own PON instead of going to pure ethernet.
FTSE firms can pay LL construction costs without even thinking about it, but the banks aren’t running leased lines to every cash machine and (remaining) branch out there. They use whatever is available and use a VPN to secure it. That may even be a 4G/5G connection in some locations.
BT Ivor is actually bang on here.
‘Would companies like BAE, Rolls Royce, or Banks be happy to use shared PON links? I don’t think so.’
Sure. For some sites stick the business critical stuff on a leased line and the bulk stuff over PON. Can save on leased lines that way by offloading traffic and leasing smaller ones.
Your bank’s public WiFi if they have it isn’t going to be on the same link as the transactions.
From the security point a view a reminder lots of staff work from home either some or all of the time. Not many of them are using leased lines.
The risk case on harvest now, decrypt later is the big links not a single site unless it’s really sensitive or datacentre in which case of course it’s going to be on its own fibre for capacity, SLA, etc. Can’t snoop upstream without a fibre tap on PON either which helps a bit.
Pretty old telco mindset that companies need point to point to have an acceptable level of security. Overlay networks are a thing.
By the time CityFibre get around to wiring up their BDUK contracted areas we’ll on be expecting 2.5TBit/sec connections.
Look on the bright side; they will still be there before Openreach and using the latest super fast technology. It would still be legacy GPON and asymmetric
BT/OR are on track for 25 million premises passed with FTTP by the end of 2026. How are CityFibre doing with their 8 million premises by the end of 2025?
As far as I am aware, there is still no agreed standard for a 100Gbps PON. At the moment, the highest bit rate standard is for 40Gbps. There are several alternative technologies for 100GS-PONs, but most seem still to be in draft/development phases.
How about G.9804.3 Then? 50-Gigabit PON standard. 100G is still in development but 50G PON is out there and in limited deployment.
FANNY_VERIFY: The mighty Netomnia uses 50PON across its network.
@ Anon: Thanks. I was looking for that, but I could not find it.
The 100G standard is currently collecting recommendations, rather than having formally entered the definition phase.
@FANNY ADAMS: Businesses use technology that may not yet be formally standardised – as is the case with US operators deploying 100G services now.
Far2329Light the businesses in the US use point to point fibre lit with commodity optics for 100G. Same as businesses in the UK and elsewhere.
Netomnia have 50GPON across their network who can order it. Its not on You Fibre website not a mention. No announcement from Netomnia its available across their network just they have a customer. Doesn’t mean they have it across the network else it would be getting sold.
@Polish Poler: No, it was specifically a shared broadband PON deployment, not a point deployment.
Link please.
I’m aware of a local provider but they either use point to point as standard or they overlay point to point when a customer orders.
No 100GPON outside of small scale vendor trials as far as I know.
No announcements from any vendors that anyone is using it to sell products and so niche and expensive it’d be cheaper to splice a spare fibre straight through to the customer and pay 2 lots of £700-£1200 for the optics.
@Polish Poler: The point is that a 100G PON was deployed for broadband distribution prior to the agreement on even the technologies that will go into the 100G PON standard.
It was tested in labs. As a lot of things are. That’s not deployment, and there aren’t any US operators deploying a 100G PON.
Vodafone and others have had Nokia and Huawei showing extremely early prototypes as proof of concept. What they haven’t done is deployed implying a usable product being available on production network.
Again you’re welcome to show me a link and I’ll admit my error. I am pretty sure you’re thinking of a small, regional company in the USA formed from the local electricity company that will sell 100G and I think 40G however they sell point to point products not PON.
Sticking experimental prototype kit on your production network and selling it really isn’t smart. Pre-standard deployments are a thing however they are a thing when the standard is agreed, or very close, and awaiting ratification.
@Polish Poler: They are not “test labs”, they are deployments. See above.
What a load of rubbish in my area city fibre have put there cables in and half of us cannot have it due to capacity issues now we cannot have any internet
‘any internet’?
It would be nice if CityFibre finished their Edinburgh build.