Openreach taps Nokia for FTTH rollout

News and Business

Nokia today announced that Openreach will deploy its fibre solutions to help meet its target of bringing ultra-fast and reliable broadband access to 20 million homes across the UK by the mid-to-late 2020s. The fibre rollout with Nokia underpins Openreach’s commitment to build a world-class, secure broadband network that can deliver differentiated customer experiences and provide a platform for the UK’s economic recovery, post Covid-19.

The rollout with Nokia focuses on deploying GPON and XGS-PON fibre access technologies to expand Openreach’s fibre-rich network to reach 4.5 million premises by the end of March 2021. It’s also capable of delivering up to 10Gbps symmetrical broadband speeds in the future, in areas where demand for additional capacity is required. Nokia’s solution supports a smooth evolution from current traditional deployments to virtualised access-network control and management by software upgrade. Openreach will deploy the Nokia fibre access solution which includes 7360 ISAM FX, Nokia 7362 ISAM DF and Nokia ISAM ONTs.

The agreement is another key milestone in Nokia’s extensive partnership with Openreach to deliver multi-Gigabit, next generation PON connectivity to customers and builds on an extensive end-to-end network framework that has been established over the past years. This includes G.fast technology which currently allows Openreach to offer 100’s Mbps to homes in areas where fibre is not available yet.

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said: “We’re accelerating our full fibre build to deliver an ultrafast, ultra-reliable and futureproof broadband network throughout the UK. This new digital platform will help our economy to bounce back more quickly from the Covid-19 pandemic – enabling people to continue work from home, and millions of businesses to operate seamlessly online for decades to come. Right now, we’re making the new network available to around 32,000 homes and businesses every week, and Nokia’s solutions are helping us to build it better, broader and faster. Our partnership with Nokia will be critical in helping us to upgrade the nation and hit our target of reaching four and a half million premises by the end of March 2021.”

Earlier this month, Openreach announced it has selected ADTRAN’s SDX Series of OLTs and Mosaic Cloud Platform as part of its project to pass 20 million UK homes and businesses by the mid-to-late 2020s with its full fibre network.

For more information, visit www.nokia.com