Last week Nokia announced a 10-year agreement with CityFibre to provide XGS-PON broadband equipment, including fibre modems for customer homes, IP aggregation switches and access nodes for its nationwide network of purpose-built Fibre Exchanges. Shipments will begin in Q4 2022.
CityFibre is building an open access network which will connect up to 8 million premises in 285 cities, towns and villages, reaching a third of the country. As part of this solution, Nokia’s Lightspan access nodes are being used by CityFibre to provide its wholesale customers with multi-gig residential broadband (up to 10Gb/s in both directions) as well as high bandwidth services for Enterprises and mobile networks.
Powered by Nokia’s Quillion chipset, the same access nodes can be used for both XGS-PON and 25G PON (25Gb/s) on the same fibre, should CityFibre wish to do this in the future. By the end of 2021, CityFibre, Nokia and the University of Glasgow successfully delivered 25G PON using the same Lightspan access node.
John Franklin, CityFibre’s Chief Technology and Information Officer, said,
“CityFibre is committed to building a Full Fibre network that is “Better By Design”, offering partners and their customers the best value on the market. By partnering with Nokia we have enlisted a trusted and market-leading technology vendor to help support a nationwide 10Gbps XGS-PON technology deployment programme.”
Sandy Motley, President, Fixed Networks at Nokia, said:
“The demand for ever-faster speeds continues and we’re delighted that our 25G ready solution has been chosen by CityFibre to enable their GPON to 10G XGS-PON national network upgrade program, supporting their mission to offer the highest capacity wholesale services into the UK market”.
Included in the deal:
- Lightspan MF optical line terminals family (access nodes)
- XS-010X-Q optical network terminations (fibre modems)
Usually located in fibre exchanges, Nokia’s high-capacity optical line terminals are deployed for massive-scale fibre roll-outs. They connect thousands of users via optical fibre, aggregate their broadband traffic and send it deeper into the network. The fibre access nodes can support multiple fibre technologies including GPON, XGS-PON, 25G PON and Point-to-Point Ethernet to deliver a wide range of services with the best-fit technology.
Nokia ONT (Optical Network Termination) devices, or fibre modems, are located at the user location. They terminate the optical fibre connection and deliver broadband services within the user premises or cell sites.
