Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) has promised to increase the capacity in telecommunications access networks for well over thirty years. While it is widely recognized that optical fibre based access networks will be a necessity in the short to medium term future, its large upfront cost and regulatory issues are pushing many operators to further postpone its deployment, while installing intermediate, unambitious solutions such as Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC). Such high investment cost of both network access and core capacity upgrade often derives from poor planning strategies that do not consider the necessity to adequately modify the network architecture to fully exploit the cost benefit that a fibrecentric solution can bring.DISCUS is a European Framework 7 Integrated Project that, building on optical-centric solutions such as Long-reach passive optical access and flat optical core, aims to deliver a cost-effective architecture for ubiquitous broadband services. DISCUS analyses, designs and demonstrates end-toend architectures and technologies capable of saving cost and energy by reducing the number of electronic terminations in the network, and sharing the deployment costs among a larger number of users, compared to current fibre access systems. This paper describes the network architecture and the supporting technologies behind DISCUS, giving an overview of the concepts and methodologies that will be used to deliver our end-to-end network solution.