Subtopia Planning to Rollout Fibre Optic Broadband in Birmingham

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today proposed to grant Code Powers to a fairly new company called Subtopia Ltd., which intends to roll-out “high-speed fibre optic and copper broadband services” for certain cities in the United Kingdom, starting with their home base of Birmingham (England).

Code Powers typically provide a number of benefits, such as enabling faster approval of major street works and allowing the operator to make use of BT’s Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) products (i.e. access to their underground cable ducts and telegraph poles).

Subtopia already claims to supply high-speed data, voice and video / TV services to end-users, which apparently includes small to medium sized enterprises, TV stations, schools, charities and residential users. According to Companies House, Subtopia became incorporated at the end of November 2013, which might explain why we haven’t heard of them before.

Subtopia’s Planned Broadband Coverage (Code Powers Request)

[Subtopia] intends to maintain and expand its network in order to provide high-speed fibre optic and copper broadband services for certain cities in the United Kingdom within the following regions: the Greater London region, the South East of England region, the East Midlands region, and the West Midlands region.

As the Applicant believes that there is a lack of affordable high-speed broadband in certain parts of Birmingham, it therefore intends to focus initially upon the Birmingham area.

The application also includes a little more detail about their future plans, with Subtopia looking to provide three classes of product:

1. A contended Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) based fibre optic connection.
2. Uncontended leased line connections.
3. Dark Fibre/shared duct access.

Apparently the GPON (1) based solution will provide a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service that should “enable end-users (both residential and business) to obtain high-speed internet connectivity” (this will be charged on a metered usage basis). The GPON link will have the capability to support speeds of 2.5Gbps upstream and 1.25Gpbs downstream, which Subtopia said will be shared by up to 32 users.

Overall Ofcom considers that granting the Applicant Code powers would benefit the public, although the related consultation will remain open until 24th November 2014. But such requests are almost never refused.