Despite last year’s concerns over redundancies (here), network provider County Broadband has today announced the completion of their work to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the Suffolk market town of Sudbury, which is home to a population of around 13,000.

The full fibre provider, which has been supported by an investment of £146m from Aviva Investors (here), is currently deploying their new FTTP network across rural parts of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk in England (i.e. they’ve been building to over 250 villages).

One of CB’s biggest individual builds, across the town of Sudbury, first began all the way back in October 2021 (here) and was a demand-led project (i.e. CB may have only been able to proceed once enough locals had expressed an interest). In total, 75% of Sudbury’s approximate 8,000 homes, businesses and community venues were earmarked for the rollout.

According to today’s announcement, the operator has now “completed building its gigabit-speed full fibre infrastructure in Sudbury“. The operator adds that a total of approximately 6,200 premises have been “connected” to the FTTP infrastructure as part of the multi-million-pound infrastructure build work across the historic market town. But we suspect they mean covered, rather than connected.

James Salmon, Director of Corporate Development at County Broadband, said:

“We are pleased to complete our full fibre network build in the historic Suffolk market town of Sudbury which will benefit from the unrivalled network reliability and significantly faster gigabit speeds that the new infrastructure provides.

As a community provider that prides itself on its commitment to engage closely with local leaders, residents and businesses across our network, we are also pleased to be working with local sports clubs and the town council on upcoming exciting events. This vital community engagement will enable us to continue to provide on-the-ground support where it’s needed across the town.”

Customers of the service typically pay from £35.99 per month (reduced from £42.99) for an unlimited symmetric speed 100Mbps package with a bundled wireless router on a 24-month term, which rises to £54.99 for 900Mbps (reduced from £84.99).

However, it’s worth noting that Openreach also has extensive FTTP coverage in the town, while Lit Fibre, which is currently being consolidated into CityFibre’s national UK network, has also covered quite a few parts of Sudbury.

Insight

At MWC this year, Shaun Collins, Executive Chairman of CCS Insight interviewed Barry Hou, Huawei’s President of 5G Marketing and Solution Sales to discuss the current state of the 5G market, and what future growth in the industry might look like

Barry explains that it has been 5 years since the launch of 5G, and monetisation of the offering is still a huge hot topic. At the end of last year, there were around 1.6 billion users, which accounts for 20% of all mobile connections. This 20% of users contributes almost 30% of total mobile traffic, and generate 40% of total revenue. He says that there are three main phases in which to monetise 5G at the moment:

1. Traffic monetisation, the foundation, to be able to provide more data packages to subscribers

2. Experience monetisation

3. New service monetisation

Shaun then asks Barry on his thoughts on experience monetization or Quality-of-Service tariffing, charging on speeds or other elements. Barry says Huawei have been working closely with operators on exactly this. The key, he says is that operators must fulfil the needs of different market segments. For example, some users need higher speeds, some need faster uplink speeds, or gamers need guaranteed low latency for the best gaming experience. These needs can then be packaged up and marketed towards different types of consumers. For example, AIS recently launched their Living network service, 49 baht for 3 hours, which represents 21% of average ARPU. Secondly, China Unicom in Guangdong has managed to recruit 300K subscribers and bring a very decent 75% ARPU increase.

The conversation then moves towards arguably the hottest topic at MWC this year, AI. Does Barry see AI generated content as a new opportunity for 5G monetisation? And what about other 5G applications? In short – yes! “The recent development of generative AI can be very positively relevant for mobile network operators.” premium connectivity is essential for AI uses cases, from AI wearables to instant language translation on calls.

Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) was also touched on. Here, Barry explained that 5G has allowed more than 50% of operators to launch FWA. 5G FWA can not only provide high speeds, but guaranteed speeds. This is thanks to the larger capabilities of the 5G network. Moving forward, Huawei thinks that FWA will be an ultimate broadband solution, not a temporary one, because 5.5G can provide FWA 1Gbps speeds – which is fibre like.

Moving away from the consumer segment of the market and onto enterprise, Barry notes how 5G for enterprise is set to be a huge growth engine, with the number of 5G private networks (excluding China) has doubled, and connections increasing by 5 times as of 2023. Operators must be able to provide the 5G to the use cases with wide area private networks, which will feature lightweight use cases in areas like mobile VPN, healthcare and transport. Secondly, the campus private network, which is more difficult) 5G with SLA becomes key part of workflows in sectors including mining, port, manufacturing, healthcare, oil and gas.

Shaun was then asked on his opinions of both 5.5G and AI. He emphasises that networks are where the money in the industry will be made, and for this, 5G and the evolution of 5G is essential and partnership will be needed

Watch the full interview here:

Network access provider Openreach (BT) are reportedly lobbying MPs, both UK government ministers and members of the Labour opposition, to introduce further legislative changes that could make it even easier for them to extend their 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network into multi-dwelling units (MDUs) by upgrading existing copper lines.

The government has already done a fair bit of work to help make it both quicker and cheaper for gigabit broadband networks to access big residential buildings (e.g. apartment blocks / flats), such as via the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021 (TILPA), which tackled situations where so-called “rogue landlords” failed to respond (here and here), and tenants demand faster connections.

The TILPA changes essentially tackled this by introducing a significantly cheaper and faster route for dispute resolution via a new court process, but this only applies after a landlord has repeatedly failed to respond to requests for access. According to the FT (paywall), Openreach appears to want to sidestep this process by securing a change that would allow them default access to conduct an upgrade, such as when they already have existing copper line infrastructure inside the building (i.e. extending existing maintenance/repair agreements to include full fibre).

The UK is home to approximately 480,000 blocks of flats or apartment buildings (MDUs). But Openreach’s CEO, Clive Selley, said the process of obtaining new wayleaves (legal land/property access agreements) from landlords to install full fibre was still “painful … time-consuming and it’s expensive” and could “easily double the cost of providing fibre to a small block”.

Despite TILPA, the operator still claims to be finding it difficult to contact the owner or managing agent of a building and has had to bypass almost 1 million apartments on streets where it had already laid full fibre. However, we should point out that this problem affects all network operators, not only Openreach.

Similarly, it’s plausible that at least some of the MDUs being referenced by Openreach may already have access to gigabit-capable broadband via a different operator, such as Virgin Media or Hyperoptic, although the FT didn’t think to query that. One other thing to be aware of here is that, if Openreach were to be granted such an extension of access, then they would gain a competitive advantage that rivals networks may not be able to harness.

According to Clive Selley, Labour was “engaging and listening” to its policy request, although it remains to be seen whether that is merely paying lip service to the issue. For its part, the Conservative government has pointed out that landlords have rights too.

A Government (DSIT) spokesperson said:

“Measures providing network operators the ability to enter multi-dwelling units without permission from the landlord, as proposed by Openreach, would significantly and adversely impact on the rights of property owners and occupiers.”

Suffice to say that there are complex issues to consider here, although Openreach have made clear that they’d be just as happy for a change to be introduced that makes it similarly easy for rival networks to access MDUs. The issue was considered while TILPA was being created, but was rejected. In any case, even if such changes were tabled for debate tomorrow, it would still be at least 1-2 years before they could be introduced. In other words, the issue of MDUs looks set to run for a few more years yet, assuming further changes do eventually get made.

News

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that the company’s requests “do not substantially comply with Commission requirements”

The FCC’s Space Bureau has rejected SpaceX’s requests to use spectrum in the 1.6 GHz, 2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz bands to provide mobile services via its next generation Starlink satellites.

The regulator said that they are currently not looking to allow additional satellite players access to these bands, hence the application itself was invalid.

“SpaceX’s application was unacceptable when it was filed because the commission is currently not accepting applications for new mobile-satellite services (MSS) entrants in the 1.6/2.4 GHz and 2 GHz bands,” explained the FCC in its ruling.

According to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, Starlink currently has 5,504 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites in orbit around the Earth, 5,442 of which are operational. These satellites currently provide connectivity to customer devices via ground-based Starlink terminals, typically deployed on top of customers’ buildings or vehicles.

However, Elon Musk and SpaceX have far greater ambitions for the next generation of Starlink satellites, which are being equipped with technology allowing them to connect directly to consumers devices, without the need for a Starlink terminal.

Six of these new satellites were launched in January to begin testing, with the first direct-to-device text sent from space using spectrum from US mobile giant T-Mobile just a week later.

Ultimately, SpaceX plans to launch 7,500 of these upgraded satellites, allowing them to provide global direct-to-device services.

To do this effectively, however, the satellites will need access to spectrum. As such, in February 2023 SpaceX filed an application with the FCC, seeking access to spectrum in the 1.6 GHz, 2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz bands to provide mobile-satellite services (MSS).

The request was immediately controversial. The 1.6GHz and 2.4 GHz bands are currently occupied by Globalstar and Iridium satellites, respectively, with little overlap. Meanwhile, DISH (recently reabsorbed into parent company EchoStar) provides satellite services over the 2 GHz band spectrum.

Both DISH and Globalstar wrote to the FCC to oppose SpaceX’s proposal, saying that the addition of a new satellite player in these bands could produce interference for existing services, including access to emergency services as provided by Globalstar.

SpaceX, on the other hand, says that “any modern, capable, and well-designed” satellite system can co-exist in these bands without fear of interference.

Ultimately, however, it was not these arguments themselves that led the FCC to reject the SpaceX’s request, but rather the nature of the request itself. As the FCC explained, there is simply no process for introducing new MSS players under the current framework.

“We conclude that the requests in the Modification Application do not substantially comply with Commission requirements established in rulemaking proceedings which determined that the 1.6/2.4 GHz and 2 GHz bands are not available for additional MSS applications and, with respect to operations in the 2020-2025 MHz band, conclude that the remaining request for uplink operations only does not constitute a comprehensive proposal necessary to sustain a satellite application, as required under Commission rules,” explained the FCC.

However, all hope is not lost for SpaceX. The lengthy application process seems to have indicated to the FCC that the current regulatory framework needs updating. SpaceX is currently petitioning the FCC to revise the rules when it comes to sharing the relevant spectrum, with the FCC issuing two public notices seeking comment on the matter earlier this week.

“The framework the commission adopted 30 years ago to facilitate multiple-operator sharing in the Band remains frozen in time, conceptualized around the almost entirely defunct MSS systems originally proposed in 1994,” argued SpaceX in a statement. “The commission now has the opportunity to modernize the rules for the 1.6/2.4 GHz Band to reflect significant technology developments and new entrants poised to bring renewed competition and consumer value in the satellite market.”

Naturally, the likes of DISH and Globalstar will continue to oppose such a request, but if SpaceX can demonstrate their technology will not cause interference to existing services, it seems unlikely that the FCC would continue to oppose such a development.

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Also in the news:
VEON exits Kyrgyzstan to focus on key markets
BT pledges to upgrade payphones nationwide
Spanish govt buys 3% stake in Telefonica, eyes 10%

The Fusion Fibre Group (formerly FACTCO), which is a rural ISP and UK full fibre network builder, has announced that their much delayed deployment across the small commuter village of Stocksfield in Northumberland (this also includes homes in Mickley) has finally started to go live after suffering three years of “unexpected hurdles“.

The previous article (here) covers some of the difficulties faced by the deployment, which were at least partly related to Project Gigabit’s wider suspension of its Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme in the county (this has affected quite a few voucher based deployments).  Suffice to say that several deployment targets were missed, and the roll-out ended up taking significantly longer than originally envisaged to complete.

The good news today is that, after finally making the network live in February, the Fusion Fibre Group has been busy bringing full fibre to local homes and businesses. The Guessburn Estate is one of Stocksfield’s first areas with full fibre connectivity to benefit from this.

Residents in the area were given the opportunity to find out more about the first phase of the new service roll out at an event which took place at Stocksfield Community Centre on Tuesday 19th March. The next release of live properties is currently expected in May, and further events will be held for residents.

Gary Spooner, Fusion Fibre Group’s Head of National Sales, said:

“Although the network build presented its fair share of challenges, witnessing the positive reaction to vastly improved speeds has been incredibly rewarding for the whole team. This upgrade wouldn’t have been possible without the support of County Councillor for Stocksfield and Mickley Anne Dale.”

In fairness, building a new FTTP broadband network, particularly for smaller and more rural communities, is often a very slow, disruptive and expensive process. Delays are not uncommon in such areas, although operators do need to have a good level of local communication to ensure that residents and businesses are kept fully informed about progress.

According to past updates, the completed build should eventually reach “close to 700 premises” across the area.

Computer scientist and CEO of full fibre network builder Netomnia (inc. sibling ISP YouFibre), Jeremy Chelot, has today talked to ISPreview about why he’s pushing the boundaries of UK broadband performance, while also touching on the topics of market consolidation, wholesale and the possibility of launching a mobile service.

Netomnia currently (Feb 2024) covers over 850,000 premises (up from 730k in Nov 2023), in parts of over 70 towns across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network. The operator’s immediate ambition is to reach 1 million premises during “early 2024” (coverage plan – plus additions here, here and here), but they may go beyond that.

The operator, like a few other alternative networks in this market, tends to adopt a Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) centric build model, which means they can keep their build costs low and rollout quite rapidly by running new fibre via Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles. Not to mention harnessing rack space inside BT’s existing exchanges, rather than building their own Fibre Exchanges (FEX).

Netomnia is also somewhat vertically integrated by virtue of operating their own ISP via the increasingly popular YouFibre brand, which last year became one of only a handful of retail providers to launch an 8Gbps capable broadband package for residential consumers (here) and they’re looking to go even faster (here). As of February 2024, the provider is home to 80,000 customers (up from 65k on 13th Dec 2023)

Overall, progress has been good and the seeds of that growth can be largely attributed to the company’s boss, Jeremy Chelot, who was previously the CEO of another fairly successful AltNet, London-focused operator CommunityFibre. Prior to that he was also the IP Core Network Solutions Manager/IP Architect for Three UK (H3G) and has now been in the fibre industry for the last 10 years.

Naturally, we wanted to know more about what drove Jeremy to start the new company, its progress, future plans and why he’s so keen to push broadband performance well beyond what many other operators are currently doing.

The Netomnia Interview

1. Firstly, can you share with us a quick general update on the progress of your network coverage (e.g. premises passed, total customers, take-up levels and areas of deployment), your future targets and how much total investment Netomnia has so far managed to attract?

Jeremy said:

Since October 2020, Netomnia and YouFibre have raised £345m in equity from Advencap, Soho Square Capital, and Digital Bridge, and, £450.5m in debt from Avenue Capital and a group of nine banks (Alpha Bank, Barclays, HSBC, ING, NIBC, Nord/LB, RBC, Standard Charter, and UKIB).

As of the end of February 2024, we have 850,000 premises on the Netomnia network ready for service (RFS), and 80,000 YouFibre customers.

We expect to reach our target of 1 million premises passed by Q2 this year. Our new target will be to achieve 2 million premises passed by the end of 2025.

2. As most people reading this will probably know, before starting Netomnia and YouFibre you were actually the CEO of another fairly well-known AltNet in London, CommunityFibre. I’m curious to know what made you want to start your current business after having done something similar before and, perhaps more importantly, what learnings you carried over from your previous role to help grow the new business?

Jeremy said:

I enjoyed my time as CEO at Community Fibre but I always knew I wanted to build a national fibre network across the UK and was convinced that I could replicate what I had done at Community Fibre on a national scale.

When I was young, I had access to a 512kbps cable connection when all my friends were still on a 56kbps modem. Having access to faster speeds meant I could learn faster than anyone else I knew at my age and without this, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

With Netomnia and YouFibre, I wanted to create a network infrastructure and an Internet Service Provider that could deliver a faster, better, cheaper Internet connection to as many people as possible, to give everyone the same access and opportunities.

3. Naturally, we can’t talk about the current market without also considering the seemingly growing likelihood that a fair number of alternative networks, under pressure from rising costs, competition and the need to generate good take-up by consumers, may shortly find themselves being either consolidated or becoming consolidators in their own right.

We sometimes fear that all this talk of consolidation may overlook the challenges of actually merging two networks together, particularly as different operators can have different approaches to build (e.g. Netomnia’s low cost / PIA approach vs a greater proportion of trench building). Not to mention any differences in technology and network design, which will later need to be aligned, adding costs.

However, Netomnia seems to be bucking some of the industry’s more negative trends, and currently shows no signs of slowing down. What makes your approach different, and do you anticipate being a consolidator yourself in the future (as opposed to being consolidated)?

Jeremy said:

Netomnia’s approach is different because we are one of the most capital-efficient altnets in the UK.

I believe altnets have proven they can build at scale and together will achieve more than 10 million premises RFS by the end of this year. I also believe that altnets have proven that they can achieve a high level of take-up with most companies having delivered more than 30 per cent take-up in mature developments. For example, YouFibre has 33 per cent take-up in its oldest cohort (2020).

Where altnets differ significantly is the capital they spend to get premises RFS and to acquire customers. By the end of February 2024, Netomnia and YouFibre have only consumed £170m of debt. That works out to £200 of debt for each premises RFS – the larger altnets in the UK have consumed up to five times more debt than us for each premises they make RFS. And it’s the same story with equity.

Because of our key difference (capital efficiency), it makes consolidation in the UK very hard. We are so capital efficient that almost every deal will cost us more than organic growth and we have an addressable market in front of us of several millions. Therefore, while we would love to be a consolidator, it makes it difficult. We have not built the business to be consolidated. We focus on delivering for our customers and becoming the third network in the United Kingdom and that’s what drives me!

4. Quite a few of the other AltNets that I’ve spoken with often tell me that they see going wholesale as the best way to help grow take-up longer-term, particularly if they can attract bigger ISPs, much as CityFibre has done (i.e. getting big brand names on board can make a world of difference, but it’s not easy).

However, Netomnia currently remains more vertically integrated, given that you primarily still sell consumer broadband packages via YouFibre, which is also run by yourself. On the flip side, as an operator, you’ve often described your network as being open to wholesale, so I’m just wondering where you are with that approach today and how you see that side of the business (excluding YouFibre) progressing?

Jeremy said:

We are keen on wholesale. I don’t believe that we will get BT or Virgin Media (but happy to get a call from them) and Sky is only working with Openreach so far – so TalkTalk and Vodafone are our main options for scaled ISPs but, as we know, both companies are quite busy at the moment with a merger (3 and Vodafone) and a restructure (TalkTalk split into three companies).

I am convinced that the future is bright because it makes sense for us to work together and let’s be fair, 12 months ago Netomnia only had 350,000 premises RFS, and now we have 850,000 and soon 1 million, therefore, we are only just becoming interesting. We will win together but our business plans have been built with YouFibre only so if it happens great, if it does not, not a big deal.

5. YouFibre and Netomnia made a few headlines last year by becoming one of only a tiny number of providers to launch an 8-10Gbps class product. By comparison, the CEO of your former haunt at CommunityFibre, Graeme Oxby, said they could do the same but have chosen to stick with a 3Gbps maximum because he felt that consumers would struggle to harness more than that in the real-world.

Not to mention the difficulties that such speeds can cause for customer support departments and speed testing (i.e. very few devices and online services are capable of even remotely close to such speeds). Is it all a game of bragging rights for marketing purposes, or is there more to this strategy?

Jeremy said:

There is more to it. Since I started rolling out fibre and providing Internet connectivity, I promised myself that I would always push the limits and drive others to do the same. We have hundreds of 8,000 Mbps customers and I am looking forward to 50G-PON. The reason the UK was behind with its full fibre availability is because operators were satisfied with FTTC (DOCSIS or VDSL) whereas they should have pushed the limit sooner…I will push them.

6. Naturally, one risk with an 8Gbps product is that it might only take a few people to join, in the same area, to stress local network capacity during certain periods. Granted, the probability of this would seem to be quite low, and each user would really have to be hammering those links constantly to cause a problem. But edge cases do sometimes emerge and if such an issue did occur then how would you resolve it or at what point does it become something that needs a specific solution (ordering extra backhaul bandwidth etc.)?

Jeremy said:

Our backhaul is not a constraint. Our infrastructure runs from BT exchanges, and we use either Dark Fibre or 100-Gbps and are in the process of upgrading to 400-Gbps. Bandwidth consumption is increasing but it’s a lot slower than our ability to scale our backhaul, so we’re not concerned by this. We have many “power” users on that network and capacity, even with 80,000 customers, is far from being a constraint.

7. Speaking of insanely good connectivity speeds, we’ve already seen the odd UK network playing around with 25G-PON technology, while a provider in Qatar recently went as far as to launch a 50Gbps package for homes using 50G-PON technology. In terms of future network platforms, what do you expect Netomnia to adopt after XGS-PON and why?

Jeremy said:

I always considered 25G-PON to be dead before it was born because of the technology cycle and roadmap (especially from China to drive volume). A little bit like NG-PON2 when Verizon or CityFibre were considering it. It was obvious (to me at least) that it would not go anywhere. The next step for us is 50G-PON because it’s fully compatible with XGS-PON and because we only have XGS-PON on the network it is easy to use combo optics to have XGS-PON and 50G-PON at the same time on the network.

The interview continues on Page 2..

A new newspaper report has claimed that the ongoing work to withdraw BT and Openreach’s old copper-based analogue line services (PSTN phones and WLR), which was due to complete by December 2025, could be facing a delay of up to two years. But the delay may only apply to vulnerable users who remain dependent upon old telecare devices, which often haven’t been updated to function with IP-based digital alternatives.

Most people should hopefully be aware that Openreach and BT, much like other operators across Europe with a legacy of older copper phone infrastructure, are in the process of upgrading all of their old analogue phone services on to a fully digital (Internet Protocol-based) network (the national stop sell began last September). KCOM are doing something similar in Hull, which aims to finish by the end of 2024, but all ISPs that offer analogue phone services are affected.

The above change is an industry, not government, led programme that is partly driven by the looming retirement of copper lines in favour of full fibre (FTTP). Not to mention that modern mobile and IP-based communication services have largely taken over from traditional home phones, which no longer see much use.

However, this change is NOT to be confused with the physical removal of copper and aluminium lines, which in many areas will continue to deliver broadband and IP-based digital phone solutions for some years to come, until FTTP has become available and customers migrated (this is a related, but separate process).

In place of PSTN/WLR, many ISPs are introducing Internet Protocol (IP) based digital phone / voice services, which require a broadband connection in order to work (either via copper or full fibre). Put another way, you plug your existing handset into the back of a broadband router (assuming it has a phone port) or Analogue Terminal Adapter (ATA), rather than the old wall socket.

Caveats of the change

The problem is that the new generation of IP based digital phone solutions do have the odd caveat, aside from being a little bit more complex to setup. For example, the new services are not remotely powered (i.e. if there’s a power cut, they go down, but ISPs can often provide very limited battery backup solutions upon request) and often don’t work properly with older alarm or telecare monitoring systems.

The issue of poor telecare support is the fault of telecare and alarm providers (i.e. failing to upgrade their systems), but this doesn’t change the reality that nearly 2 million people use these vital telecare systems in the UK (e.g. elderly, disabled, and vulnerable people). Often these exist in rural and isolated areas, where mobile services may also go down during power cuts. Ofcom are separately reviewing mobile resilience, but complex issues of cost and wayleaves may create some barriers.

According to The Telegraph’s (paywall) sources, the high risk that the digital phone switch-over could put a significant number of vulnerable people’s lives at risk may result in the December 2025 completion target being pushed back by up to another 2 years. But the new report appears to state that this delay would only apply to vulnerable people, such as those who make use of telecare systems.

A BT spokesman said:

“We’re working closely with the Government and Ofcom as we continue the important programme to move customers onto digital landlines.

Our priority remains doing this safely, supporting our vulnerable customers and those with additional needs in particular, and we’re working with key organisations that represent these groups to achieve that.

This includes encouraging more local authorities and telecare providers to make us aware of telecare users so we can make sure they get the right support at the right time.

The current pause will have an impact on the timing of the overall programme – but we are working to minimise any delays, as the switch to digital landlines is a necessity given the increasing fragility of the analogue landline network.”

A spokesman for the government (DSIT) said:

“The decision to switch off the analogue landline network has been taken by the telecoms industry, and the UK Government has no formal role in administering the switchover. Deciding timelines for its completion is a matter for providers, but we continue to engage with the industry to ensure vulnerable customers are protected throughout this process.”

The reality is that keeping the old analogue services going would not only be extremely expensive, but is also proving difficult as manufacturers stop producing related kit and services for a declining and increasingly ancient technology. At the same time, telecare providers seem unlikely to up their game in time for the 2025 deadline. All told, this increasingly suggests that some delay may be unavoidable.

On the other hand, the Telegraph’s piece seems to overlook that Openreach and BT are about to pilot a new SOTAP for Analogue product from 1st May 2024 (here), which is a phone line service that does NOT require broadband to work and can harness modern networks to function similarly to the older analogue service.

The solution, once introduced, would not be available for new service provisions (only existing / vulnerable customers) and is intended to be a temporary product (possibly running until around 2030 or as long as it takes). In theory, this would allow more time for people and networks to adapt, but it won’t be launched until later in 2024 at the earliest and is arriving quite late to the party, which might help to explain today’s talk about a delay.

Broadband providers across the UK are rushing to adopt a new solution for resolving complex customer network faults. Known as KO (Kick Off), the new solution is designed to save ISPs time and money in the process of finding and fixing complex faults, while also avoiding big payments under Ofcom’s automatic compensation scheme.

The way the new system works is simple enough. Customers who report a fault will, at first, be put through a long phone queue, before later being passed between multiple different departments. Then – after about 3 hours of the same – it will eventually report that their fault has been logged and is being investigated, which is considerably more efficient than today’s systems.

After this, a post-action customer survey will be emailed through to assess the effectiveness of the system, with only one mandatory option being offered in response – the selection of “Yes” for “It was great!”. At this point, the KO algorithm will fully kick-in by employing the very latest AI technologies to determine how much time and cost may be needed to resolve the fault.

During this period, the ISP will continue to issue constructive updates on the status of the fault investigation, such as by promising to have it resolved the next day and then automatically delaying it by another day each time that target isn’t met. The number of days to continue this cycle can be set by the ISP, up to a limit of 365 (applicable to providers that don’t support automatic compensation), unless the end-user switches or passes away first – whichever comes sooner.

However, if the system determines that the fix would be very costly to resolve, then it will automatically issue a final notice to resolve the fault: “We’re pleased to report that your line has been successfully ceased. The fault is therefore resolved. Thank you for using our service.” Customers in this boat will also be required to pay off the remainder of their contract, due to having chosen to exit their term early by reporting a fault (as “transparently” set out in small print).

At present, KO is still only in the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage, although a number of major ISPs are believed to have been trialling the system, or something very.. similar, for at least the past few years. The good news is that the initial system feedback is already pointing to a customer satisfaction rate of 100%.

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APRIL FOOLS! or is it..?

We are today publishing our 2024 summary of the top full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network operators with the greatest share of the UK new build homes market, which is naturally a table that ends up being topped by the market’s largest network access provider – Openreach (BT). But they’re not the only player.

At present over 98% of new build homes are already being constructed with support for Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure (here), which hasn’t changed much in the past couple of years but does compare well with the figure of over 60% in 2017 (here). Just for comparison, more than 60% of all UK premises (new builds and existing properties) can access an FTTP network (Jan 2024 data) and that rises to 80% for gigabit-capable broadband (FTTP and Hybrid Fibre Coax combined).

Suffice to say that a lot of progress has been made over the past few years and England now mandates gigabit-capable broadband for almost all new build homes (here), albeit with a few exceptions. Both Wales (here) and Scotland (here) are also following by this same example.

However, we also find it informative to do an annual check to see which full fibre operators are having the most impact on new build homes, which involves an analysis of information extracted from Thinkbroadband‘s excellent database of coverage.

As usual, we’ve split this into two tables below, one of which looks at developments over the past year (Nov 2022 to Oct 2023), while a second table summarises the total delivery since January 2018 (i.e. reflecting the period when full fibre started to become the primary roll-out focus for UK operators).

In addition, we’ve included an entry for Virgin Media’s gigabit-capable Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network for context. Readers may note that Virgin still delivered a few HFC connections to new build sites in 2023, which is largely reflective of legacy contracts that have existed with property developers since before they switched to focus on FTTP (including via nexfibre).

Top UK Full Fibre Operators for New Build Homes in 2024

As before, there are some caveats with this data. For example, some very recent builds may be too new to have been spotted. This is because it takes a lot of time and effort to identify everything, thus the latest data may sometimes lag a few months behind the reality.

In addition, some tiny or individual developments may also be missed (e.g. personal projects or property conversions) and the availability of new postcode data can cause a further lag. On top of that, Thinkbroadband will only identify live / RFS services (i.e. completed builds where the service is available from an ISP). But otherwise the table below should, broadly, provide a reasonable reflection of the current new build homes market.

Should any operators want to ensure that all of their new build home sites are being included in this data, then please contact Andrew at Thinkbroadband to help fill in any blanks

Top 13 Full Fibre Operators for New Build Homes (2024)

Network Operator
New Build Premises (Nov 2022 to Oct 2023)

Openreach (BT)
126,439

Hyperoptic
28,028

OFNL
7,483

FibreNest (Persimmon Homes)
2,163

Virgin Media Cable (HFC)
2,026

Virgin Media FTTP (RFoG)
603

Grain Connect
454

CommunityFibre
391

4th Utility
286

Glide
238

CityFibre
224

Brsk
157

YouFibre (Netomnia)
132

Openreach is naturally top of the table as the UK’s largest network operator, followed by Hyperoptic, with other players in the market – even major networks like Virgin Media – all sitting some way behind. The historic totals below tell a similar story, although we note that Virgin’s influence was much more significant in the past.

We should also add that Virgin Media holds an expanded network partnership with Open Fibre Networks Limited (here), which isn’t reflected in this data. But this does mean that consumers can often take Virgin Media’s broadband services on many, but not all, of OFNLs sites.

The data also reveals that a shade over 28% of the new builds added last year were being covered by alternative network providers, even if that is dominated by Hyperoptic and, to a lesser extent, OFNL.

Finally, for a bit of extra context, we’ll summarise how the table splits down when we look over a much wider range of data – gathered for new builds between 2018 to October 2023.

Top 20 Full Fibre Operators for New Build Homes (Since 2018)

Network Operator
New Build Premises (2018 to Oct 2023)

Openreach (BT)
956,999

Hyperoptic
179,778

Virgin Media (HFC)
105,859

OFNL
89,931

Virgin Media FTTP (RFoG)
50,166

FibreNest (Persimmon Homes)
36,774

YouFibre (Netomnia)
22,778

Nexfibre – Virgin Media (FTTP XGS-PON) *
11,781

CityFibre
6,700

Zzoomm
6,613

FullFibre Limited
6,371

Trooli
5,888

CommunityFibre
5,583

KCOM
5,521

4th Utility
5,241

Grain Connect
4,782

Swish Fibre
3,714

Fibrus
3,206

Gigaclear
2,765

The observant among you might notice the oddity of including nexfibre in the table directly above, but not in the top table for the past year, particularly given that nexfibre’s network only went live in 2023. Part of this is down to the fact that they were building out for a while before the network went live, as well as some quirks of the postcode data and the age of the new build homes sites.

Otherwise, it’s no huge surprise to find that builds linked to Openreach, Hyperoptic, Virgin Media and OFNL remain some of the most dominant when it comes to provision for new build homes. All four of those players have always had a strong focus on such developments. FibreNest has also grown into this quite a bit in recent years.

A new study from the charity Age UK has claimed that around 4.7 million people aged 65 and over in the United Kingdom are unable to complete all eight of the most fundamental tasks required to use the internet, while 2.3 million of those in the same age group do not use the internet at all (48% of these people are aged 75+).

The “fundamental tasks” mentioned above include being able to turn-on devices and enter account logins, use settings and controls on the device, open applications, set up connection to WiFi, open internet browsers, keep passwords secure and change passwords when prompted to do so. All fairly second nature to most of us, but not if you’ve had very little experience of computers or the internet in your daily life.

However, for those older people who have got over the barriers of using the internet, further analysis by Age UK shows that among those over 65s who are online, around 2.5 million are “unable to complete tasks required to thrive in a digital society in day-to-day life“. These key skills include being able to communicate, to store and access information and content, carry out transactions, search for information and be safe online.

The charity is clearly concerned about so many people “being left behind“, although it also correctly recognises that it “will never be possible to get everyone online and trying to force the issue poses a real risk to older people’s health, finances and ability to participate in society.” This is something that the government’s ongoing drive for everybody to go digital often overlooks.

Caroline Abrahams CBE, Charity Director at Age UK, said:

“Many public as well as private service providers seem hell-bent on shifting their activities online but, as our new report shows, it’s clear that in doing so they are leaving fully one in three of the older population behind. In fact, the inconvenient truth is that many millions of people of all ages, especially older ones, are neither confident nor adept at using the internet, and want and need to continue to be able to transact their business in more traditional ways.

The Government should step in and ensure that we can all choose to access and use public services offline – by phone, letter or face to face as appropriate – rather than forcing everyone down a digital route many of us are struggling to navigate, and some of us are unable to navigate at all.

Older people who are not internet users or digitally savvy tell us how cross and upset they are when the main access to crucial services like GP appointments and Blue Badge applications, moves to being online. As our new report shows, this often leaves them feeling disregarded and disempowered, and the consequences can be serious, severing them from the support they need to stay fit, well and independent.

Age UK supports older people who want to go online to do so through a number of excellent digital programmes run by our local Age UKs, but the fact is that for a variety of reasons not everyone is able or willing to use the internet – particularly for more sophisticated tasks – and this will always be the case. Policy makers should stop fantasising about a digital-only world, come back down to earth and make sure older people can continue to access the services to which they are entitled – whether they use the internet or not.”

As we always say, not everybody wants to use the internet and nobody should force it on to those who don’t want or need it, but equally support should always exist for those who wish to give it a try. Admittedly, this philosophy will become increasingly strained as the Government continues to extend its digital-by-default strategy. Finally, Age UK has some recommendations.

Age UK Recommends:

➤ All public services, including the NHS, council services and other nationally provided public services, must offer and promote an affordable, easy to access, offline way of reaching and using them.

➤ The Government must make sure local government receives enough funding to provide offline services.

➤ There needs to be much more funding and support to enable people who are not internet users, but who would like to be, to get online.

➤ The Government should lead on the development of a long-term, fully-funded national Digital Inclusion Strategy, to support people of all ages who want to go online to do so (the last such strategy was produced in 2014).

➤ The Government should change the law to require banks to maintain face-to-face services.

➤ Banks must accelerate the roll-out of shared Banking Hubs to meet the high and continuing demand for face-to-face banking services.