Nokia and Hrvatski Telekom conduct first 25G PON fibre broadband trial in Croatia

With the operator looking to “radically” increase the capacity, bandwidth and quality of its future broadband service and the comms tech firm adding a new country to demo its passive optical network (PON) edge optical broadband technology, Nokia has revealed a successful 25Gbps fibre broadband trial with Hrvatski Telekom.

Part of Deutsche Telekom Group (DTAG), HT Group claims to be the leading provider of telecommunications services in Croatia, providing fixed and mobile telephony, wholesale, internet and data services.

The main activities of Hrvatski Telekom and its subsidiaries are the provision of communications services and the design and construction of communications networks in the Republic of Croatia. In addition to fixed telephony services – such as access and traffic of fixed telephony services and additional fixed network services, the group also provides internet, IPTV and ICT services, data transmission services – line rental, Metro-Ethernet, IP/MPLS, ATM – and mobile telephone network services GSM, UMTS and LTE.

Nokia’s offering utilises 25GS-PON technology that includes Lightspan access nodes – high-capacity access nodes for massive scale fibre roll-outs – as well as 25G/10G optical cards and fibre modems. Typically located in telecom central offices, Lightspan nodes see use in connecting up to thousands of users via optical fibre, aggregate their broadband traffic and send it deeper in the network.

The fibre access nodes can support multiple fibre technologies, including GPON, XGS-PON, 25GS-PON and Point-to-Point Ethernet to deliver a wide range of services with the best-fitting technology. Nokia optical network termination (ONT) devices/fibre modems, are located at the user location. They terminate the optical fibre connection and deliver broadband services within the user premises or cell sites.

The trial took place at Hrvatski Telekom’s laboratory in Rijeka, Croatia, and was the first in the country to use 25G PON technology – and one of first trials with a DTAG company. “This demo shows that our FTTH network is fully compliant with the cutting-edge PON technology that will radically increase the capacity, bandwidth and quality of our broadband service in the future,” said Hrvatski Telekom chief technology officer Boris Drilo.

“By already deploying Nokia’s single multipurpose G/XGS-/25G PON platform, we are showing exciting capabilities of the largest fibre network in Croatia capable of the fastest possible speeds.”

Sandy Motley, president of fixed networks at Nokia, said: “As fibre access networks develop, communications service providers are now looking beyond the immediate needs of residential customers at new applications for enterprise customers and to support their own mobile networks with backhaul. 25G PON, which is available today with our Quillion powered fibre nodes, is an easy solution to immediately add scale and capacity, and only requires a change in optics for operation.”

The deployment in Croatia follows similar trails in Belgium and the UK. In May 2021, Belgian operator Proximus revealed it had used Nokia 25G passive optical network (PON) technology to connect the Havenhuis building in the Port of Antwerp with the Proximus central office in the middle of the city.

In the UK, BT-owned broadband provision division Openreach announced that it too had been trialling Nokia 25G PON technology to conduct the UK’s first-ever tests of what it says is a new full-fibre technology, which it believes could deliver ultra-reliable broadband services 10 times faster than today’s UK standard deployments.