CityFibre launches 2.5Gbps symmetrical wholesale broadband in UK

UK fibre infrastructure outfit CityFibre has launched what it claims as the UK’s first wholesale 2.5Gbps symmetrical consumer broadband product.

The new 2.5Gbps product is being made available to CityFibre’s ISP customers on a rolling basis, starting in its most mature XGS-PON deployment areas, before reaching all homes served by its rapidly expanding XGS-PON platform in the coming months.

The new platform is capable of supporting symmetrical speeds of up to 10Gbps and is designed to be easily upgraded to 50G PON, virtually unconstrained in its ability to meet future demand, according to CityFibre.

The company says it expects to have deployed its XGS-PON equipment into over 90% of its fibre exchanges by the end of this year, with the new 2.5Gbps product becoming available to around 20% of its ready for service footprint, currently standing at 2.5 million homes.

CityFibre said that all services provided over XGS-PON offer significant carbon savings compared to GPON. This is due to XGS-PON equipment being twice as power efficient and able to support more ONT connections per port.

Greg Mesch, CEO, CityFibre

CityFibre also aims to offer multi-gig speeds to cities where its networks is yet to be upgraded to XGS-PON via a 2Gbps/1Gbps asymmetric GPON product that it plans to launch in the coming months. These services will ultimately be migrated to the XGS-PON platform when available.

CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch said: “With the launch of the UK’s fastest and most cost-effective connectivity products, we are demonstrating the benefits of infrastructure competition and raising the bar for all wholesale networks. Ubiquitous, high-quality, low-carbon connectivity is the keystone of all advanced and community-wide applications of the future. By working with our ISP partners to bring symmetrical multi-gigabit broadband consumer services to market today, with businesses to follow, the UK will finally have a network and services that will enable our future, rather than holding it back.”