UK independent provider CityFibre and its launch partner Vodafone have successfully completed a trial of a 2Gb/s residential service in York.
The trial was made possible by CityFibre's recent upgrade of its York network to XGS-PON access technology, which will be rolled out as standard across its network in April. The company aims to pave the way for the future introduction of residential and commercial services at symmetrical speeds of up to 10Gb/s across its footprint with 2Gb/s services.
The trial saw selected end customers in York able to access symmetrical speeds of up to 2Gb/s, which is twice the speed of the fastest services widely available on the CityFibre network. The new service is delivered using the Vodafone Pro II broadband service and the new Vodafone Ultra Hub and Super WiFi6E Booster bundles.
This follows the successful upgrade of CityFibre's first urban network from G-PON technology to XGS-PON technology. The XGS-PON upgrade is designed to achieve nearly 10 times the capacity of its existing G-PON-based architecture. XGS-PON also enables providers to continuously upgrade their networks while also supporting more customers on each OLT port, resulting in significant cost savings, optimized power consumption and increased efficiency in scaling their networks.
After a successful trial, we have taken an important step towards delivering multi-gigabit full-fiber services to millions of homes and businesses across the country," said Michael Greening, director of product for CityFibre. But at 2Gb/s, we've only scratched the surface of what the network can do. Thanks to our XGS-PON upgrade programme, we will be able to deliver symmetrical speeds of up to 10Gb/s in the future, further proving that not all full fibre networks are created equal."
Max Taylor, chief commercial officer at Vodafone UK, added: "We are the UK's largest full-fibre broadband provider and recording our fastest ever home WiFi speeds demonstrates the true capability of the technology and our Pro II broadband. With the UK's fastest routers, we are ready for the next exciting developments so our customers always have access to the fastest broadband speeds in all corners of their homes at an affordable price."
