EXFO partners with Openreach for ground-breaking Full Fibre initiative

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Jan 07, 2021, 00:01 ET

Openreach to deploy permanent Full Fibre monitoring technology to help deliver ultrafast and ultra-reliable broadband to millions of UK homes and businesses.

LONDON, UK, Jan. 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - EXFO Inc. (NASDAQ: EXFO) (TSX: EXF), the communications industry's test, monitoring and analytics experts, and Openreach, the United Kingdom's largest digital infrastructure firm, today announced their collaboration on a major initiative to accelerate Full Fibre deployment, and enhance the quality of build and experience for customers across the UK.

The project is essential for delivering next-generation Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks, which provide the digital infrastructure required to work, learn and socialize. As part of its industry-leading Fibre First programme, Openreach has committed to delivering 20 million homes passed with FTTP by the mid-to late 2020s, assuming it has the right investment conditions. Openreach has also committed to building out this new digital infrastructure to 4.5 million premises by the end of March 2021.

Following a competitive tender process, Openreach has awarded EXFO a contract to supply optical test heads and test access switching for this initiative. With its cloud-based Nova Fiber solution, EXFO will equip Openreach to assure its build, thereby accelerating the programme and avoiding costly return visits to fix connection problems—additional "truck rolls" more than double operators testing costs.¹ Following installation, Openreach will be able to remotely monitor its fibre infrastructure supporting the in-life operations of its Full Fibre service.

This announcement comes as Openreach hit a record build rate for its Full Fibre broadband programme. Openreach engineers are now delivering faster, more reliable connectivity to another 40,000 homes and businesses every week, or the equivalent of a home every 15 seconds.

Peter Bell, Director, Network Technology, Openreach: "We know that now more than ever that being connected matters. We're convinced that our new Full Fibre network can play a crucial role in keeping the nation connected. This year, our build has been gathering pace and momentum, and we're determined to match that rapid speed of deployment with the highest standards of build quality build and customer service.

EXFO will help us get there. As a long-term Openreach partner, EXFO was selected thanks to its proven ability to provide fast, automated qualification of fibre builds, and for its unique iOLM OTDR technology. We're committed to working with the best-in-class to maintain our position as the UK's leading Full Fibre builder and we're excited to lead the way as we continue to deliver high-quality network connections to homes and businesses across the UK."

Wim te Niet, Vice President, Sales – EMEA, EXFO: "Openreach is an early mover in adopting permanent fibre monitoring technology, which will eventually cover all households in the UK. Currently, the FTTH/B penetration rate in the UK stands at 18%², and Openreach has an ambitious plan to build out Full Fibre to millions of households and businesses. We see a similar wave in other key European markets like Germany. I believe network operators across Europe will soon follow Openreach's lead to ensure first-time-right installations, reduce turn-up failures, and substantially reduce truck rolls for service calls. As for markets with high FTTH/B penetration rates, telecom operators are finding they need sophisticated automated monitoring tools to ensure superior customer experience. EXFO's innovative Nova Fiber solution gives them these abilities."

About EXFO
EXFO (NASDAQ: EXFO) (TSX: EXF) develops smarter test, monitoring and analytics solutions for fixed and mobile network operators, webscale companies and equipment manufacturers in the global communications industry. Our customers count on us to deliver superior network performance, service reliability and subscriber insights. They count on our unique blend of equipment, software and services to accelerate digital transformations related to fibre, 4G/LTE and 5G deployments. They count on our expertise with automation, real-time troubleshooting and big data analytics, which are critical to their business performance. We've spent over 35 years earning this trust, and today 1,900 EXFO employees in over 25 countries work side by side with our customers in the lab, field, data center and beyond.

About Openreach
Openreach Limited is the UK's digital network business. We're 35,000 people, working in every community to connect homes, schools, shops, banks, hospitals, libraries, mobile phone masts, broadcasters, governments and businesses – large and small – to the world. Our mission is to build the best possible network, with the highest quality service, making sure that everyone in the UK can be connected. We work on behalf of more than 660 communications providers like SKY, TalkTalk, Vodafone, BT and Zen, and our broadband network is the biggest in the UK, passing more than 31.8m UK premises. Over the last decade we've invested more than £14 billion into our network and, at more than 185 million kilometres, it's now long enough to wrap around the world 4,617 times. Today we're building an even faster, more reliable and future-proof broadband network which will be the UK's digital platform for decades to come. We're making progress towards our FTTP target to reach 20m premises by mid-to late 2020s. We've also hired more than 3,000 trainee engineers this past financial year to help us build that network and deliver better service across the country. Openreach is a highly regulated, wholly owned, and independently governed unit of the BT Group. More than 90 per cent of our revenues come from services that are regulated by Ofcom and any company can access our products under equivalent prices, terms and conditions. For the year ended 31 March 2020, we reported revenue of £5bn.

For more information, visit  www.openreach.co.uk/.
Email: [email protected]

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