Nokia and Openreach, a subsidiary of BT, tested 25G PON fiber technology at Openreach’s lab in Ipswich, U.K. The companies say the trials prove that current GPON and XGS-PON broadband technologies and future upgrades to 25G PON will work together seamlessly.
Nokia’s 25G PON technology can deliver download speeds of 25 Gbps over a single optical fiber, and it can run on the same underlying infrastructure that Openreach is already building across the U.K.
Nokia and Openreach plan to launch a field trial by the end of 2021 to put the technology through its paces, using a range of bandwidth-hungry applications.
Openreach is in the process of building a full fiber network with the goal of making fiber the default option for customers throughout the U.K. It’s passing about 43,000 new premises with fiber every week with the goal to reach 25 million premises across the U.K. by the end of 2026.
RELATED: BT’s Openreach pushes fiber adoption with wholesale discounts
Peter Bell, director of network technology at Openreach, said in a statement today, “As the country’s largest digital infrastructure provider, it’s crucial that we continue to plan, innovate and evolve our network, to make sure we have the capacity and capabilities that the U.K. needs in the future.”
Sandy Motley, president of Nokia's fixed networks group said: “The key to unlock the virtually unlimited capacity that fiber offers is to develop new generations of fiber technology – and faster chips. Nokia’s Quillion chip allows us to have a solution that supports three generations of PON technology.”
RELATED: Nokia’s head of network infrastructure eyes PON opportunity
Federico Guillén, president of Nokia’s network infrastructure business group, told Fierce recently that PON technology is at an inflection point; it’s going from Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) 2.5 Gbps to 10 gig PON (XGS PON), with 25 gig PON on the horizon.
Nokia’s CEO Pekka Lundmark has said that next generation access is a big opportunity for the company.