Openreach preps to boost network automation, visibility and control

With the UK’s fixed broadband market getting ever more competitive, and increasingly differentiated by service quality, the country’s leading provider Openreach has revealed the steps it is taking to boost automation, network visibility, control and product flexibility for end user customers across its full-fibre broadband and Ethernet network.

The move is centred around Openreach’s plans to become one of the first companies of its kind to deploy the Altiplano Access Controller cloud (SDN) platform from Nokia  one of company’s two primary strategic network suppliers.

The key benefit of the deployment is that Openreach will be to make its fibre-based network easier to manage, more efficient, reliable – namely quicker to identify faults via automation – and to cut some operational costs.

Openreach currently uses Nokia’s AMS platform for managing its full-fibre FTTP network. As it evolves to what it calls a new data centre inspired “leaf-spine-leaf architecture”, it plans to use Altiplano to manage clusters of Nokia equipment. These clusters will support FTTP and point to point Ethernet for its next-generation Ethernet Access Direct 2 (EAD2) product for businesses in either dedicated or shared configurations. It will also enable streaming telemetry giving Openreach greater insight into our network performance in near real time.

The provider believes that Altiplano’s abstraction capabilities and modern interfaces gives it the benefit of OSS simplification by using the use of “intents”. That is, asking Altiplano to configure an end-to-end services across the cluster, rather than OSS which needs to understand complex network topology and configure each individual component in cluster.

In terms of new benefits that would have been difficult to achieve with the legacy equipment, Openreach noted that its new EAD2 product makes use of the new cluster headend architecture and integrates multiple Nokia product families together. These clusters will enable higher speeds, use around 50% of the energy and up to 80% reduction in space compared with EAD1. In the future, Openreach will make use of the clusters for XGS-PON and potentially higher speed cablelink products.

“We are working on what we believe to be a world-first deployment of the Altiplano access controller platform to enhance resilience and service in our fixed full-fibre network – to manage a cluster that includes the OLTs and the IP equipment and has required Nokia to develop new capabilities for us,” said Openreach director of network technology Trevor Linney.

“This is the next step in our plans to build a future proof, multi-service, one network platform that supports both full-fibre FTTP and future ethernet products.”

The Altiplano proof of concept is live in the Openreach labs and its first live EAD2 site will land in April 2025 to support a network build ready for the product launch in 2026.