Network access provider Openreach (BT), working alongside new 50G PON technology from strategic supplier Nokia, has this morning announced that they’ve “successfully tested” the United Kingdom’s “first live” 50Gbps speed broadband connection from a residential property in Ipswich (Suffolk, England).
At present most of Openreach’s existing Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network, which covers over 17 million UK premises, is still using their old Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology – this places limitations on how fast they can go before capacity becomes an issue. GPON supports a capacity on each trunk line of up to 2.5Gbps downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream.
By comparison, many of Openreach’s competitors are already busy deploying 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology (the ‘X’ stands for 10, the ‘G’ for Gigabits’ and the ‘S’ for symmetric speed), which is a significantly faster, more cost-effective and power efficient technology. But Openreach have since signalled a shift away from GPON by adopting a ComboPON approach (here), which allows them to adopt XGS-PON alongside GPON.
The first 1Gbps symmetric speed packages using this new technology are due to launch around April 2025 in some of Openreach’s contracted rural Project Gigabit areas (here). But the operator always likes to keep one eye on the future and has now tested something many times faster – 50G PON.
Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology at Openreach, said:
“As the country’s largest full fibre provider, it’s crucial that we continue to research, innovate and evolve our network to meet our customers’ demands for decades to come.
The Full Fibre network we’re building today is a platform for the UK’s economic, social and environmental prosperity, and this test proves we can keep upgrading the speeds and services our customers experience over that network long into the future.
Today we’re deploying XGS-PON ready equipment, and this trial proves we’re ready for the next generational leap, as and when it’s needed.”
Sandy Motley, President Nokia Fixed Networks, said:
“This trial shows the incredible power of fibre to increase network capacity in an efficient way. As a futureproof, energy efficient technology, fibre is used by operators like Openreach to connect everything to multi-gigabit services. Our platform provides them with a full range of PON technologies and services that can be delivered over their existing fibre network. From 10G and 25G today to eventually 50Gbps or even 100G, our unique toolkit of fibre solutions allows Openreach to future-proof their network and flexibly address their evolving network demand.”
During the field test, Nokia’s 50G PON technology achieved astonishing real-world download speeds of 41.9Gbps (Gigabits per second) and upload speeds of 20.6Gbps. Just to be clear, this test was run over a section of Openreach’s existing Full Fibre network, although the exact setup wasn’t stated.
However, it’s debatable whether this really is the UK’s “first live” test of 50G PON, since Netomnia is already believed to have conducted tests of a similar prototype from ADTRAN. In fact, Netomnia are still planning to launch their first commercial 50G PON based broadband packages during 2025 (here), while by comparison Openreach are only testing it.
At this point it’s worth remembering that Openreach were boasting about having tested 25G PON technology from Nokia all the way back in 2021 (here), although no such commercial packages using that solution have ever emerged. So as fun as all this is to watch, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the imminent arrival of packages faster than 10Gbps.
The usual catch in all this is the difficulty of actually being able to harness all that speed when online. Most internet services still seem to struggle to harness more than a few hundred megabits per second, assuming they can do even that, while the 1Gbps+ domain is still a challenge (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver 1Gbps). On the other hand, marketing departments and consumers with deep pockets like big performance numbers, even if they’d struggle to harness all the speed.
Mind you, there was a time when even a 56Kbps dialup connection was considered “fast“. Internet connections and consumer demands are in a constant state of growth and evolution, so there will come a time when even 50Gbps+ speeds might seem positively pedestrian, but that’s still a long way off and Openreach are just ensuring that they’re ready when the time comes.