In telecommunication, the term outside plant has the following meanings:In civilian telecommunications, outside plant refers to all of the physical cabling and supporting infrastructure, and any associated hardware located between a demarcation point in a switching facility and a demarcation point in another switching center or customer premises. In the United States, the DOD defines outside plant as the communications equipment located between a main distribution frame (MDF) and a user end instrument.

An access network is a type of telecommunications network which connects subscribers to their immediate service provider. It is contrasted with the core network, which connects local providers to one another. The access network may be further divided between feeder plant or distribution network, and drop plant or edge network.