Adtran scores a big customer win with BT’s Openreach for fiber deployment

15 May Adtran scores a big customer win with BT’s Openreach for fiber deployment

In order to achieve its goal of having multi-gigabit services to 4.5 million premises across the U.K. by March of next year, Openreach is now working with Adtran.Openreach, which is a division of BT Group, had previously worked with Nokia and Huawei on its FTTx deployments, but picking Adtran may be a way of hedging its bets. The U.K. government has restricted the use of some of Huawei’s fiber and 5G gear. President Donald Trump is pressuring the U.K. government to enforce a stricter ban on Huawei.

While the financial terms of the agreement weren’t released, it’s a huge customer win for Huntsville, Alabama-based Adtran.

Sponsored by Dell Technologies

To the Edge and Beyond: Resistance is Futile

Programmable fabrics have been predicted to revolutionise the network space for quite some time now, however we’re now seeing several key drivers that look like making this technology a reality sooner rather than later.

Openreach will deploy Adtran’s SDX series optical line terminal (OLT) posts and its Mosaic Cloud platform to support Openreach’s GPON and XGS-PON network. Openreach plans to have 20 million locations passed with fiber by mid-to late 2020s.

“We’re already making our new ultrafast, ultra-reliable broadband network available to around 32,000 UK homes and businesses every week – and we’re on track to reach our target of reaching four and a half million premises with ‘Full Fibre’ by the end of March 2021,” Openreach’s Peter Bell, network technologies director, in a statement. “But we don’t want to stop there. Our new network will support the UK’s economy for decades to come and help it bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, so we’ll be accelerating our Full Fibre build throughout the year.

“Adtran’s solutions will play a key role in helping us achieve that as we’re continually searching for innovative technologies that can help us build the network better, broader and faster for our customers.”

RELATED: Adtran fuels U.K.-based toob’s gigabit deployments

Last year, U.K.-based toob picked Adtran to help it build a full fiber platform to deliver gigabit speeds to more than 100,000 premises by the end of 2021.

With rural areas largely underserved by broadband, the British government set forth a mandate of having full-fiber to every home in the U.K. That has led to plethora of fiber builds by new service providers such as toob, CityFibre, Gigaclear, and Hyperoptic. Liberty Global-owned Virgin Media is looking to expand its fiber network beyond urban areas in the U.K. via a wholesale fiber network joint venture.