Month: June 2025
UK’s CityFibre launches 5.5Gbit/s wholesale broadband service- 3 times faster than BT Openreach
CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fiber optic platform, has unveiled a new 5.5Gbit/s wholesale broadband internet service based on 10Gbit/s XGS-PON technology that has already been rolled out across 85% of the company’s network. CityFibre claims its new product is more than three times faster than the highest rate available service from its much larger rival, Openreach (the network access arm of BT). and available at a much lower wholesale cost, CityFibre’s 5.5Gb symmetrical product will enable partners to offer a range of Multi-Gig speed tiers to customers, improving margins whilst providing a valuable customer retention tool for the long term.
Highlights:
- CityFibre’s new 5500/5500Mbps service offers >3x faster downloads, >45x faster uploads than BT Openreach’s fastest full fibre service which is 1800/120Mbps and is delivered over its GPON network.
- CityFibre’s upgraded XGS-PON network provides numerous benefits over GPON technology, including network cost savings, reduced power consumption, improved performance, and enhanced efficiency.
- CityFibre’s launch of its new Multi-Gig products enables the UK to keep pace with countries including France, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United States of America where consumers are already making the most of affordable Multi-Gig services.
Photo Credit: CityFibre
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: “The UK’s full fibre future is here, thanks to CityFibre’s powerful, 10Gb XGS-PON network. Our ISP partners are already connecting customers with speeds over 2Gb and exceeding expectations when it comes to quality and reliability, but our next generation of full fibre will set a new standard for what’s possible.
“CityFibre started out to challenge the incumbents and bring choice and competition to the UK market. This is another huge step-forward, giving ISPs more power and flexibility than ever before and bringing affordable Multi-Gig speeds and an unrivalled experience to millions of UK consumers.”
Even faster multi-gig services will be launched in 2026 the company promises.
CityFibre’s network now passes more than 4.3 million premises, which the company says means it is more than halfway along its journey towards its “rollout milestone” of 8 million premises. Actual service take-up, however, has reached just 518,000, an increase of around 181,000 customers on its previous total. During the year covered by the earnings statement, CityFibre announced a partnership with Sky that will see the UK’s second-largest broadband provider launch services on CityFibre’s network later this year.
References:
https://cityfibre.com/news/cityfibre-unveils-new-5-5gb-wholesale-product-its-fastest-ever
Nokia and CityFibre sign 10 year agreement to build 10Gb/second UK broadband network
Dell’Oro: Broadband access equipment sales to increase in 2025 led by XGS-PON deployments
Frontier Communications offers first network-wide symmetrical 5 Gig fiber internet service
Frontier Communications fiber growth accelerates in Q1 2025
AT&T grows fiber revenue 19%, 261K net fiber adds and 29.5M locations passed by its fiber optic network
Google Fiber planning 20 Gig symmetrical service via Nokia’s 25G-PON system
STELLAR Broadband offers 10 Gigabit Symmetrical Fiber Internet Access in Hudsonville, Michigan
Dell’Oro: RAN revenue growth in 1Q2025; AI RAN is a conundrum
Dell’Oro Group just completed its 1Q-2025 Radio Access Network (RAN) report. Initial findings suggest that after two years of steep declines, market conditions improved in the quarter. Preliminary estimates show that worldwide RAN revenue, excluding services, stabilized year-over-year, resulting in the first growth quarter since 1Q-2023. Author Stefan Pongratz attributes the improved conditions to favorable regional mix and easy comparisons (investments were very low same quarter lasts year), rather than a change to the fundamentals that shape the RAN market.
Pongratz believes the long-term trajectory has not changed. “While it is exciting that RAN came in as expected and the full year outlook remains on track, the message we have communicated for some time now has not changed. The RAN market is still growth-challenged as regional 5G coverage imbalances, slower data traffic growth, and monetization challenges continue to weigh on the broader growth prospects,” he added.
Vendor rankings haven’t changed much in several years, as per this table:
Additional highlights from the 1Q 2025 RAN report:
– Strong growth in North America was enough to offset declines in CALA, China, and MEA.
– The picture is less favorable outside of North America. RAN, excluding North America, recorded a fifth consecutive quarter of declines.
– Revenue rankings did not change in 1Q 2025. The top 5 RAN suppliers (4-Quarter Trailing) based on worldwide revenues are Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Samsung.
– The top 5 RAN (4-Quarter Trailing) suppliers based on revenues outside of China are Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and ZTE.
– The short-term outlook is mostly unchanged, with total RAN expected to remain stable in 2025 and RAN outside of China growing at a modest pace.
Dell’Oro Group’s RAN Quarterly Report offers a complete overview of the RAN industry, with tables covering manufacturers’ and market revenue for multiple RAN segments including 5G NR Sub-7 GHz, 5G NR mmWave, LTE, macro base stations and radios, small cells, Massive MIMO, Open RAN, and vRAN. The report also tracks the RAN market by region and includes a four-quarter outlook. To purchase this report, please contact us by email at [email protected]
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Separately, Pongrantz says “there is great skepticism about AI’s ability to reverse the flat revenue trajectory that has defined network operators throughout the 4G and 5G cycles.”
The 3GPP AI/ML activities and roadmap are mostly aligned with the broader efficiency aspects of the AI RAN vision, primarily focused on automation, management data analytics (MDA), SON/MDT, and over-the-air (OTA) related work (CSI, beam management, mobility, and positioning).
Current AI/ML activities align well with the AI-RAN Alliance’s vision to elevate the RAN’s potential with more automation, improved efficiencies, and new monetization opportunities. The AI-RAN Alliance envisions three key development areas: 1) AI and RAN – improving asset utilization by using a common shared infrastructure for both RAN and AI workloads, 2) AI on RAN – enabling AI applications on the RAN, 3) AI for RAN – optimizing and enhancing RAN performance. Or from an operator standpoint, AI offers the potential to boost revenue or reduce capex and opex.
While operators generally don’t consider AI the end destination, they believe more openness, virtualization, and intelligence will play essential roles in the broader RAN automation journey.
Operators are not revising their topline growth or mobile data traffic projections upward as a result of AI growing in and around the RAN. Disappointing 4G/5G returns and the failure to reverse the flattish carrier revenue trajectory is helping to explain the increased focus on what can be controlled — AI RAN is currently all about improving the performance/efficiency and reducing opex.
Since the typical gains demonstrated so far are in the 10% to 30% range for specific features, the AI RAN business case will hinge crucially on the cost and power envelope—the risk appetite for growing capex/opex is limited.
The AI-RAN business case using new hardware is difficult to justify for single-purpose tenancy. However, if the operators can use the resources for both RAN and non-RAN workloads and/or the accelerated computing cost comes down (NVIDIA recently announced ARC-Compact, an AI-RAN solution designed for D-RAN), the TAM could expand. For now, the AI service provider vision, where carriers sell unused capacity at scale, remains somewhat far-fetched, and as a result, multi-purpose tenancy is expected to account for a small share of the broader AI RAN market over the near term.
In short, improving something already done by 10% to 30% is not overly exciting. However, suppose AI embedded in the radio signal processing can realize more significant gains or help unlock new revenue opportunities by improving site utilization and providing telcos with an opportunity to sell unused RAN capacity. In that case, there are reasons to be excited. But since the latter is a lower-likelihood play, the base case expectation is that AI RAN will produce tangible value-add, and the excitement level is moderate — or as the Swedes would say, it is lagom.
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Editor’s Note:
ITU-R WP 5D is working on aspects related to AI in the Radio Access Network (RAN) as part of its IMT-2030 (6G) recommendations. IMT-2030 is expected to consider an appropriate AI-native new air interface that uses to the extent practicable, and proved demonstrated actionable AI to enhance the performance of radio interface functions such as symbol detection/decoding, channel estimation etc. An appropriate AI-native radio network would enable automated and intelligent networking services such as intelligent data perception, supply of on-demand capability etc. Radio networks that support applicable AI services would be fundamental to the design of IMT technologies to serve various AI applications, and the proposed directions include on-demand uplink/sidelink-centric, deep edge, and distributed machine learning.
In summary:
- ITU-R WP5D recognizes AI as one of the key technology trends for IMT-2030 (6G).
- This includes “native AI,” which encompasses both AI-enabled air interface design and radio network for AI services.
- AI is expected to play a crucial role in enhancing the capabilities and performance of 6G networks.
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References:
Dell’Oro: Private RAN revenue declines slightly, but still doing relatively better than public RAN and WLAN markets
ITU-R WP 5D reports on: IMT-2030 (“6G”) Minimum Technology Performance Requirements; Evaluation Criteria & Methodology
https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/m/R-REC-M.2160-0-202311-I!!PDF-E.pdf
