For the ground-breaking Full Fibre initiative, EXFO partners with Openreach

EXFO Inc , the interchanges business' test, checking and investigation specialists, and Openreach, the United Kingdom's biggest computerized foundation firm, today reported their joint effort on a significant activity to quicken Full Fiber organization, and improve the nature of assemble and experience for clients across the UK.

The venture is basic for conveying cutting edge Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) organizations, which give the advanced foundation needed to work, learn and mingle. As a feature of its industry-driving Fiber First program, Openreach has focused on conveying 20 million homes passed with FTTP by the mid-to late 2020s, expecting it has the correct venture conditions. Openreach has likewise dedicated to working out this new advanced framework to 4.5 million premises before the finish of March 2021.

Following a serious delicate cycle, Openreach has granted EXFO an agreement to supply optical test heads and test access exchanging for this activity. With its cloud-based Nova Fiber arrangement, EXFO will prepare Openreach to guarantee its fabricate, along these lines quickening the program and dodging exorbitant return visits to fix association issues—extra "truck moves" more than twofold administrators testing costs.1 Following establishment, Openreach will have the option to distantly screen its fiber framework supporting the in-life activities of its Full Fiber administration.

This declaration comes as Openreach hit a record fabricate rate for its Full Fiber broadband program. Openreach engineers are presently conveying quicker, more solid availability to another 40,000 homes and organizations consistently, or what might be compared to a home at regular intervals.

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.