Openreach, a division of BT, is the UK’s leading digital network provider. Responsible for the country’s local access network known as the ‘first mile’, the company is delivering fibre broadband services to communities across the UK to connect homes, schools, hospitals, governments, and businesses to the world.

With the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in an increase for the need of home connectivity, Openreach continued to build full fibre networks to ensure reliable broadband was available throughout the country. By leveraging Ciena’s solutions, Openreach is able to increase available capacity on its fibre network by a factor of four, allowing connections to be scaled in increments of 100G.

“Our customers require agile networks and customizable solutions to meet demands and manage costs. Ciena’s solutions make it possible for us to deliver faster, more agile, resilient services for our customers in a shorter timeframe – and will help us meet the increasing bandwidth needed to align with our recently announced plans to expand our FTTP footprint to 25 million premises by 2026,” said Peter Bell, Openreach’s Director of Network Technology.

Ciena and Openreach have also teamed up to create OSEA Filter Connect Lite, a highly efficient ‘hub and spoke’ solution that provides multiple 10GbE/100GbE links into a low-power, small footprint aggregation points at key network locations. With OSEA Filter Connect Lite, Openreach customers can scale the offering to expand capacity and incorporate future network features to adapt to changing user demands and connectivity needs driven by the increase in home and remote working.

Ciena’s solutions boost connectivity

To increase network capacity and improve network performance for its customers, Openreach recently deployed Ciena’s Routing and Switching family of products (including 3928, 5160, 5164 and 5171), WaveLogic Ai coherent optical technology, and Managed Services. With Ciena’s solutions, Openreach is helpings its customers meet the increased demand for improved digital connectivity across the UK.

You can find more information about Ciena and Openreach’s collaboration here.