Netomnia and STL to test programmable FTTx in live networks

STL has announced that it will test its programmable FTTx (pFTTx) software solution with Netomnia for their live networks in the UK.

With experience in optical connectivity for more than 25 years, STL is bringing software-defined networking to large-scale fibre to the home, cell sites and business networks through pFTTx. The company recently announced general availability for pFTTx, a software-defined, open, and disaggregated Passive Optical Network (“PON”) solution that is intended to make fiber networks intelligent and agile. 

pFTTx offers core benefits like scalability, enhanced and detailed Telemetry reports, open community alignment (ONF/BBF/ITU-T), onboarding of third party Quality of Experience (QoE) applications, providing a better customer experience along with faster time-to-market and reduced total cost of ownership. This software stack, being cloud-native (Kubernetes microservices-based), can run on any Cloud-native Computing Foundation (CNCF)-based telco Edge Cloud platform. The solution currently supports both XGS-PON and GPON technologies and is upgradeable to 25G. Also, STL’s pFTTx solution is certified and listed on the VMware Marketplace.

The UK is in a phase of rolling out advanced full-fibre broadband and new-age players such as Netomnia are taking this intent forward.  STL and Netomnia have recently partnered for Optical Fibre deployment and are now collaborating to incorporate programmability into large-scale FTTx networks. Once concluded, this trial will pave the way for the adoption of advanced software-defined architectures for FTTx in the UK.

Commenting on this collaboration, Jeremy Chelot, CEO, Netomnia, said, “The promise of full-fibre broadband will be realised when service providers implement advanced architectures that software-ise the fibre networks. We are excited about the possibilities that STL’s pFTTx solution presents. This trial with STL will be significant as we will jointly demonstrate pFTTx in a live scenario.”

Commenting on the announcement, Chris Rice, CEO, Access Solutions, STL, said, “pFTTx is a cloud-based access network solution that elevates the network service providers’ business model. We are excited to collaborate with Netomnia for their Ultrafast full-fibre broadband program. Our solution is intended to help them achieve accelerated network rollout with faster deployment, provisioning and enhanced network performance.”