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CEO of UK Full Fibre Provider Cityfibre Wins 1st Charles Kao Award

Thursday, Mar 14th, 2019 (2:26 pm) - Score 1,380

The CEO of UK fibre optic network builder Cityfibre, Greg Mesch, has today become the first person to receive the first Charles Kao Award at the annual FTTH Conference in Amsterdam, which recognises the “extraordinary contribution” of an individual to the acceleration of full fibre (FTTH / FTTB) broadband deployment.

The award itself is given in honour of Nobel Prize winner Sir Charles Kuen Kao (aka – “Father of Fibre Optics“), whom in 2009 was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for “ground-breaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication.“Sadly Charles passed away last year in Hong Kong after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease (here).

Over the past few years Cityfibre has built itself up to become one of the UK’s largest alternative network providers for Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and Dark Fibre networks. At present they’re in the process of creating a £2.5bn investment to reach 1 million UK premises in 10 cities with FTTP by the end of 2021 (phase one – expected cost of c.£500m), which should rise to 5 million across 37 cities and towns by the end of 2024 (here).

Suffice to say that the competitive pressures being created by Cityfibre, as well as other AltNet ISPs in the market (e.g. Hyperoptic, Gigaclear, Community Fibre etc.), have helped to light another flame under the established players (Openreach, Virgin Media) and is thus helping to encourage even more “full fibre” deployments.

Ronan Kelly, President of the FTTH Council Europe, said:

“When we decided to create the Charles Kao Award, it was clear that the winner had to be a firm believer in the benefits of full fibre. CityFibre’s strategic partnership with Vodafone, its recent fundraise of over £1.1bn towards its rollout to at least 20% of the UK market as well as his global experience of several other markets such as the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany is testament to Greg’s leadership and the scale of his contribution to our industry.”

Greg Mesch said:

“To be associated with Charles Kao, such an innovator in our industry, is a real honour so I’m delighted and grateful for this award. With the potential of a full fibre future dawning on countries around the world, it has been a rare privilege to help set the four different countries on a path to making it happen. I urge all those individuals keen to do the same to reject the status quo and harness the desire for a new generation of businesses to take the reigns.”

Congrats!

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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Comments
8 Responses
  1. Avatar photo chris conder says:

    Great stuff Greg, going where BT fear to tread. Great to see an altnet getting this award.

    1. Avatar photo Alex says:

      Seriously?? Where exactly?

    2. Avatar photo CarlT says:

      Alex does have a point here. CityFibre are doing just that – deploying fibre into cities.

      That said, they are deploying FTTP in places Openreach are deploying G.fast only, or even leaving with nothing more than VDSL.

  2. Avatar photo Alex says:

    Well done Goldman Sachs for your extraordinary £538m contribution 🙂

  3. Avatar photo TheFacts says:

    We should note the ‘FTTC Council’ is simply a suppliers organisation trying to sell it’s product.

    As Charles is no longer with us I assume they don’t need permission to use his name.

    1. Avatar photo CarlT says:

      Bit cynical. They’d have permission from whomever is the executor of his estate.

    2. Avatar photo GNewton says:

      “We should note the ‘FTTC Council’ is simply a suppliers organisation trying to sell it’s product.”

      I know as a hardcore BT fan you’ll love your FTTC. But article was mentioning the ‘FTTH Council Europe’. It’s about real fibre, not the ASA fake ‘fibre broadband’ notion!

    3. Avatar photo TheFacts says:

      Well spotted.

      x

Comments are closed

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