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Network operator CityFibre, which has already deployed their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across around 4.5 million UK premises, recently indicated to Mobile Europe’s Digital Telco event that they would be looking to upgrade to 50G-PON or 100G-PON during the early to mid 2030s.
The operator, which has long aspired to reach 8 million premises (c.30% of the UK) and just secured a major £2.3bn funding boost to fuel its plans for wider market consolidation (here), only recently completed an upgrade from their legacy G-PON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) to XGS-PON (Symmetric 10Gbps PON) technology – a process that took roughly two years after starting in the Spring of 2023 (here).
The new XGS-PON network is already being supported by faster multi-gigabit wholesale tiers for ISPs and consumers, such as the 2.5Gbps (symmetric) speed tier that first launched in 2023 (here) and the 5.5Gbps product that joined it in June 2025 (here). One of the first UK broadband providers to offer the top 5.5Gbps tier recently became Sky Broadband (here).
As usual, the catch here is that harnessing such speeds online is still rather tricky for domestic connections, particularly since it’s already difficult to max out a 1Gbps line via most online services (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver 1Gbps), although some platforms (e.g. Steam, Microsoft) are catching up. Mind you, it wasn’t so long ago that we were saying the same thing about 100Mbps packages or 1-2Mbps before that etc.
However, the forward march of technology waits for no man, and CityFibre, as well as other operators (e.g. Netomnia recently became the first to introduce a 50G-PON network – here), are already looking beyond XGS-PON. According to CityFibre’s Chief Technology Officer, David Tomalin, the operator has developed a “15 to 20 year rolling plan for PON technologies” to support their wholesale ISP clients and ensure they remain competitive.
David Tomalin said (credits TelcoTitans):
“The ability to move from GPON to XGS-PON: we’ve overlaid that in a twelve-month period because we can quickly upgrade the network to do that, and then we plan for the 2030s — mid-2030s, early-2030s — to move to 50G or 100G PON. Again, it’s going to be the same sort of twelve-month migration period, if we decide to do it.”
According to CityFibre’s own statements, the GPON to XGS-PON upgrade actually took twice as long as David suggests above (starting in May 2023 and finishing in mid-2025), which is also excluding their initial pilot in York. But it’s reasonable to believe that the main bulk of this work (migration) took place during 2024-2025 and the learnings they’ve taken from that could result in a more rapid roll-out of future technologies.
At this point it’s important to stress that such upgrades aren’t just about delivering faster speeds to consumers and the obvious marketing benefits of being able to promote faster packages than the incumbent(s), particularly Openreach and Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre). The adoption of something like 50G-PON can also make managing the network and its capacity more cost-effective, particularly as the network fills up with customers.
David does however appear to be undecided on their exact technology choice for the future, which we suspect may be partly subject to how quickly the network grows its coverage and take-up over the next few years. Not to mention the maturity of commercial 50G or 100G PON products. Currently 50G PON suppliers have only just started to push related products into the market and network operators also have to ensure that they can feed this with plenty of data capacity.
Naturally other network operators will be making similar plans, although we don’t usually hear them talking about such things in public so early on.