UK broadband provider Openreach has outlined plans to upgrade more of its full fiber network to deliver faster broadband speeds and greater capacity.

The company said today (August 19) that it will expand the rollout of XGS-PON technology across its network in order to do this, as Openreach nears its 25 million fiber location target.

According to Openreach, the technology will be able to bring up the current top download speeds of 1.8 Gbps to 8.5 Gbps on full fiber, which is 28 times faster than the download speed a typical UK household experiences today.

XGS-PON technology is a computing standard that has the capability of delivering shared Internet access rates up to 10Gbps.

The plan is for these speeds to be available to more than a million premises over the next 12 months. This builds on the ongoing XGS-PON pilot launched in March this year across 40,000 residential premises in Guildford and surrounding areas.

Beyond the next 12 months, Openreach said it's aiming to expand the future-proofing technology to cover around a third of its full fiber network over the next five years.

This will be done through a program of further build, network upgrades and equipment modernization.

Openreach's full fiber network has been built largely through the use of GPON technology, which already delivers ultrafast gigabit broadband services. The company's full fiber network has so far reached 23.4 million premises, with the BT subsidiary aiming to hit 25 million by the end of this year.

The demand for more data, however, means there's a use case to go further with newer technologies such as XGS-PON.

“Our full fiber network already offers Gigabit-capable broadband to more than 23.4 million premises, and more than 9.4 million customers have upgraded so far. As demand for data continues to grow, our investment in XGS-PON technology will enable us to offer even higher speeds over the same network, and the additional capacity needed to support the UK's digital future," Trevor Linney, director of network technology, Openreach.

“By continuing to invest in upgrades, we’re delivering a platform that will power the next generation of technology, from AI-enabled services, smart homes and future mobile networks, to cloud-based business and public services.”