Cyient, a global engineering and technology solutions company is assisting major Altnets to expand their footprint across urban and rural areas to provide gigabit-capable fibre connectivity across UK using Openreach’s PIA infrastructure.

Business Challenge

The goal of the UK government is to “deliver a nationwide full-fiber to the premises network” by 2033 inspired various communications service providers (CSPs), Telcos, AltNets, and investors to acquire a major share in the UK market. Their aggressive plans to roll out their networks were challenged by infrastructure requirements such as digging roads/streets for the installation of new poles and more.

Since this is a time-consuming task, requiring various permit approvals, the CSPs and AltNets decided to lease Openreach PIA (physical infrastructure access) infrastructure to roll out their network. This would reduce the cost of deployment and network rollout time and help them capture a larger market share.

The customer was looking for a partner with knowledge of end-to-end FTTx design solutions to support both network design and field survey, as well as experience in understanding available infrastructure in the UK. Knowledge about PIA, the civil network owned by Openreach, was a key driver in this engagement. They also expected the partner to deploy a large team for quick turnaround, which Cyient was well positioned to do.

Our customers, keen to stay ahead of the competition, were committed to capitalizing on their market share and had an aggressive rollout plan to add more cities to their network.

The Cyient Solution

Provision of FTTP plan & Design (P&D) and associated Field Survey services using Openreach’s PIA solution, to build a network with gigabit speed across the UK.

We adopted a five-step plan and design solution to address the requirements for efficient planning, design, and field survey:

1. Planning: Initial planning is done at the city level, locating the PoP (point of presence) and backbone connections.

2. Desktop Design: High-level planning of the network is based on existing infrastructure data and desktop survey.

3. Field Survey: To enhance the high-level design (HLD), the field survey validates actual field conditions, with photographs of the infrastructure indicating the vacant ducts, and reporting of potential hazards. 

4. Detailed Designs (Low-Level): Once the high level design is approved with/without changes, detail designing is done based on the HLD and survey information.

5. Field Walkout: A field walkout with LLD (low level design) ensures the design aligns with field conditions.

The Results

Using our proven five-step plan and design solution, we helped our customers to provide fiber connectivity to ~1.25 million premises across urban areas and 40 villages (covering ~50 thousand premises) in rural areas within the UK.

Why Cyient