{"id":36550,"date":"2023-12-12T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=36550"},"modified":"2023-12-12T11:18:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T11:18:56","slug":"adtran-hints-at-openreachs-uk-plan-for-10gbps-broadband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/12\/adtran-hints-at-openreachs-uk-plan-for-10gbps-broadband.html","title":{"rendered":"Adtran Hints at Openreach’s UK Plan for 10Gbps Broadband UPDATE"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EMEA CTO of network technology firm Adtran, Ronan Kelly, has today done an interesting video interview with Richard Tang, CEO of UK broadband ISP Zen Internet<\/a>, which reveals a little bit more about Openreach<\/a>’s future plan to upgrade their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP<\/a>) network with 10Gbps capable XGS-PON.<\/p>\n

Just to recap. ADTRAN are one of Openreach<\/a>’s strategic suppliers, alongside the likes of Nokia (and formerly Huawei and ECI), for their full fibre broadband network. The operator’s UK FTTP<\/a> network currently remains dominated by their use of a Gigabit Passive Optical Network<\/strong> (GPON), which places limitations on how fast they can go before capacity becomes an issue. GPON supports a capacity on each trunk line of up to 2.5Gbps downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream, which needs to be shared between several premises.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> Openreach<\/a> are currently trialling download speeds of up to 1.8Gbps via GPON on FTTP<\/a> broadband lines, while uploads remain limited to 120Mbps for homes and 220Mbps for businesses (here<\/a>). This is about the limit of what they can squeeze out of the current GPON setup.<\/div>\n

At the same time, many of their competitors are already busy deploying 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology (the ‘X’ stands for 10, the ‘G’ for Gigabits’ and the ‘S’ for symmetric speed), which is a significantly faster, more cost-effective and power efficient technology. Openreach has also conducted various trials of this technology over the years (example<\/a>) – usually focused on business lines, yet a clear upgrade plan has yet to surface.<\/p>\n

None of this is surprising because Openreach, as a huge operator with a lot of legacy systems and services, has to extensively test any significant upgrades and even small changes – often touching millions of properties – can have a big cost impact. Naturally, they tend to prefer solutions that don’t require major changes to what is already installed in homes, although until recently the options for solving this were more limited. But the interview suggests they have now settled on a solution.<\/p>\n

According to Adtran’s Ronan Kelly<\/strong> (see interview<\/a>), Openreach are adopting their ComboPON<\/strong><\/a> approach, which would make it much easier for them to upgrade without needing to change all of the existing optical modems (ONTs) inside homes that they’ve deployed via GPON (e.g. they can use either GPON or XGS-PON based ONTs, whatever the situation requires). Openreach has hinted at this before, but they’ve often been vague about it.<\/p>\n

Ronan Kelly said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“What [Openreach are] looking at is what we call within Adtran, Combo PON technology. Now this is not a new technology, per se, it’s basically a miniaturisation, if you will, where in the optical component, what we call the transceiver, that connects on to the fibre networks, we’ve been able to pack in both GPON and XGS-PON components in to that single optical component, including the optical combiner that sits within that component.<\/p>\n

So now, very cost effectively, operators like Openreach and many of the AltNets that are using the same Combo PON technology can deliver both GPON and XGS-PON at the exact same time across those individual fibre strands … they’ve been quite astute in the migration path that they’ve selected.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In querying this further, Adtran confirmed to ISPreview that the setup (specifically SDX-6330<\/strong> – as pictured and released at the start of 2023) will give operators a clean upgrade path from pure GPON to ComboPON (GPON + XGSPON out of the same transceiver port at the same time, in a non-blocking fashion, onto the existing single strand of fibre), representing a power efficient way to deploy both technologies on the same fibre network.<\/p>\n