Openreach Expands UK Rollout of 10Gbps Speed Full Fibre XGS-PON Broadband UPDATE
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has this morning announced that they intend to expand their ongoing pilot of 10Gbps capable XGS-PON based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology, which over the next 12 months will be made available to “more than a million premises” across the United Kingdom. But a third of its full fibre network could be covered over the next 5 years.
Openreach’s existing full fibre network is currently still largely based off older Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology, which places limitations on how fast it can go before capacity becomes an issue. For example, GPON supports a capacity on each trunk line of up to 2.5Gbps (Gigabits per second) downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream, which needs to be shared between several premises. The fastest consumer broadband download speeds on this network currently reach up to 1.8Gbps (120Mbps upload).
In response the operator has been busy running a customer pilot of a new 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) capable Passive Optical Network (PON) technology, called XGS-PON – the ‘X’ stands for 10, the ‘G’ for Gigabits’ and the ‘S’ for Symmetric speed. This is being offered at maximum symmetric speeds of up to 8.5Gbps and at present EE still seems to be the only broadband ISP able to offer such packages (here).
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The problem is that Openreach’s pilot area for this has so far been limited to the Guildford and neighbouring Woking areas – available across around 40,000 premises, which also catches some nearby locations like Brookwood, Puttenham, Clandon, Shere and Worplesdon. But Openreach now plan to expand its availability to more than 1 million UK premises by the end of August 2027.
Over the longer term, the business said they’re looking to expand the future-proofing technology to cover around a third of its Full Fibre network over the next 5 years, through a programme of further build, network upgrades and equipment modernisation and will “continue to review further expansion opportunities based on market demand, and feedback from its Communications Provider customers“.
Trevor Linney, Openreach’s Director of Network Technology, said:
“Our Full Fibre network already offers Gigabit capable broadband to more than 23.4 million premises, and more than 9.4 million customers have upgraded so far. As demand for data continues to grow, our investment in XGS-PON technology will enable us to offer even higher speeds over the same network, and the additional capacity needed to support the UK’s digital future.
By continuing to invest in upgrades, we’re delivering a platform that will power the next generation of technology, from AI-enabled services, smart homes and future mobile networks, to cloud-based business and public services.”
The upgrade is necessary for Openreach to remain competitive with their many rivals in the wider UK market, most of which have been using XGS-PON technology for years and some are already going beyond that. But the operator’s limited XGS-PON availability and slow deployment may yet hinder its adoption. Part of this might reflect the fact that their engineering resources are still more focused on new FTTP build than upgrading their existing network.
On the other hand, it’s worth noting that it will also take time for the operator’s many retail ISP partners to fully adapt, due to the need for new capacity links (trials of 100Gbps Cablelinks aren’t expected until 2027 – here) and investment to support such speeds. In addition, second tier wholesale suppliers are often slow to adapt (e.g. BT Wholesale), which is another reason why some retail ISPs can lag behind.
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Consumers who adopt this service, even if they’ve already had an Openreach based FTTP line installed, will typically require another engineer visit to install one of the operator’s latest 10Gbps capable Optical Network Terminals (ONT) inside their homes (i.e. this is the optical modem that goes on your inside wall, before being wired to a router from your ISP).
The classic challenge with packages this fast is that most consumers would struggle to harness those top speeds, usually due to Wi-Fi/device limits and any limitations of the online servers you’re connecting to (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver). But if you’re happy to pay for it, then why not. The rest of the internet will catch up eventually, as it always does. The power of marketing is often in its ability to sell you something that you don’t strictly need, yet.
UPDATE 9:48am
In terms of the deployment plan for XGS-PON’s future expansion, Openreach has informed ISPreview that they’ll deploy it across “various locations“, including, but not limited to, large towns and cities (as we’d expect for obvious economic reasons – lots of customers in a smaller area). The first phase will be a selection of headends in handover Exchanges in Southern England. In later phases they intend to expand coverage to Exchanges across all four nations.
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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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Seen some of the combo cards in a few sites, but a long way to go
Pretty slow rollout I must say! Only 1/3rd coverage over 5 years. I guess they will focus on areas where GPON’s more limited shared capacity is already becoming an issue.
> This is being offered at maximum symmetric speeds of up to 8.5Gbps
Is this right? I thought they were only offering asymmetric speeds.
Symmetrical speeds will br offered at outrageous prices so that their leased lines aren’t hit.
Consumer packages are asymmetric speeds, so far as I can tell from how Openreach are positioning it. But their network profiles do support symmetric speeds (likely as premium business options). This is a bit like how you can get 220Mbps uploads on their existing FTTP network, but that’s only intended as a business plan (for consumers it’s 120Mbps).
Question is whether there’s any evidence that their GPON network is having any congestion issues. Personally I’ve never run speedtest and not got my advertised speed (900/109). I doubt whether many consumer lines even get close to maxing out their connections very often unless running speedtest. I bet 150/30 is probably more than adequate for 90% of consumers who just want to watch Netflix etc & the improved stability & lower latency of FTTP are bigger factors.
I don’t understand why Openreach is so stubborn to provide symmetric speeds especially since all the others are offering it. If I want symmetric Hyperoptic is currently my only option.
BT has been waiting on for the market for such services to both exist and to be profitable.
Openreach and BTwholesale always protect the business first than the residential for better upload and symmetric speeds for some reason.
I do remember BT isp say to me most peoples at home don’t need more than 1Gig FTTP and don’t need faster upload.
“If I want symmetric Hyperoptic is currently my only option”
Then you have the symmetric option – what difference would it make to you if Openreach provided it as well?
That’s what the market is about – you have choices, and you choose the combination of performance and price that matches your needs most closely.
Not so click of a switch like the BT Fanboys on here been chiming on about. Looks like a handful of exchanges have combi cards then!
So, back to reality, another 5 years of waiting for Brokenreach to do something that competitors have already done, and even then, its still asymmetric and much higher priced.
Shambles.
The term “Exchange” is so inappropriate these days.
Look like BT Wholesale will be very slow ahead (changed from 1000/220 to 1800/220 next August 2027)
In my exchange, barely anyone offers anything over 900Mbps. Zen’s top package is 900/100. We’ll get XGS-PON in about 2038. It does feel like even in the FTTP world, there are different tiers of service for different areas. We have Netomnia, but YouFibre is pants. My hope is that the Virgin/Nexfibre deal goes through and we start to get a choice of ISPs over the Netomnia XGS-PON lines.
What a joke. Still can’t get anything other than a 70mb connection in parts of Cheshire, suffering with 2g (edge) mobile service, and incompetence from alt nets who took the money from the government then did half arsed jobs installing to a couple of houses in some villages.
Yep. Similar story where I live too (Hampshire). FTTC is the only option as Openreach has cancelled rollout plans. Mobile network not worth mentioning.
We’re still waiting for fibre in large parts of London if it’s any consolation. Meanwhile it’s getting common to see at least 3 or 4 providers in adjacent areas.
The whole fibre rollout has been a bit of a disaster really with Openreach being too slow and providers just overbuilding each other instead of working to get fibre to everyone in the UK.
Two massive issues, the g-pon and physical roll out is very expensive, which if alt nets weren’t doing xgs-pon then it would be very profitable for or.
But xgs-pon is being used by alt nets – thats a danger for or, add in that most will skip 25gbit pon (28gbits) and jump to 40gbit pon (50gbits).
OR will face the double problem of rollout costs and speed competition from alt nets – and increasing speeds.
So the balance to moving to xgs-pon is a balancing act that will see OR get it wrong……… like in this case
Andy Burnham won’t be too happy about this (why south all the times!) Nothing for North!