VIAVI to support Open Fiber’s push for 100% Gigabit in Italy

Open Fiber currently provides connectivity for 300 national and international service providers and serves 14 million Italian households.  

By the end of its 2022-2031 plan, the wholesale-only provider aims to cover approximately 24 million households, including unserved and underserved areas, effectively ending the digital divide between urban and rural areas within Italy. The rollout is being financed through an investment of 15 billion euros, including a loan of 7.2 billion euros from leading Italian and international banks – the largest loan ever made in EMEA for telecommunications networks.

Building on an existing relationship with VIAVI, Open Fiber has chosen to deploy Optical Network Measurement System (ONMSi) from VIAVI to help manage network compliance and troubleshooting across the lifecycle of its fibre deployments. The ONMSi solution uses a centralised high resolution OTDR test head that enables installers in the field to remotely commission, map topologies, automate the acceptance and reporting of fibre quality, losses, and distances, all via a mobile application. This is done segment by segment for each link from the PoP to the customer premise connection. In the event of failure, maintenance teams can isolate and triage faults remotely. ONMSi was selected as it has proven to be an efficient, reliable, and fast fibre certification platform, which helps optimise and accelerate network processes from creation (construction) and service delivery (activation), all the way through to in-life assurance (monitoring).

“Open Fiber is charting an ambitious path to modernise the digital infrastructure for the whole of Italy,” said Manuel Mato, Vice President, EMEA, VIAVI. “Our partnership enables Open Fiber to automate and accelerate their FTTH build without sacrificing quality while ensuring error-free first-time customer activation. Equally important, proactive in-life monitoring also allows Open Fiber to isolate network issues and shorten resolution and restoration times. We are proud of our role in helping Open Fiber realise a digital Italy.”