ISP Giganet Launch 1Gbps Burstable Full Fibre Ethernet for £149

Matthew Skipsey says:

It will, one day/decade!

I’ve been in this industry for a few years now, and the buzz of FTTP roll-out plans that we have today is like nothing I’ve seen before.
– Investors are lining up to pile money into FTTP companies.
– Consumers and businesses are really demanding it.
– Many alt-net are springing up weekly (it seems!), targeting a mix of urban and rural areas, and getting some serious passed premises figures now for the more established ones
– The government is starting to say the right things.
– One of the potential new PM’s is setting some rather ambitious UK-wide FTTP rollout times (even if a little too unrealistic!).
– Ofcom are starting to get that more needs to be done to open up Openreach’s ducts/poles/dark fibre.
– Openreach’s DPA (duct/pole sharing) is facilitating faster/cheaper rollouts – still far from ideal.
– Openreach are finally talking and doing wide-scale FTTP.
– Virgin are making an effort too.
– BDUK projects are more focused on FTTP than FTTC.
– DCMS Gigabit voucher scheme and Rural Giganet voucher scheme available
– LFFN public sector full-fibre network running
– 5G is arriving, and this needs fibre for the backhaul. Many more masts than 3G/4G will be required, this will increase fibre rollouts.
– The Broadband Universal Service Obligation which is coming into effect soon may have an impact on FTTP rollout??
– I could go on……

The impact and visibility may be hard to see today, but we’ve just started in many cases, and things will only accelerate.

My main concerns for FTTP rollouts remain:
– Wayleaves: expensive, time consuming, and sometimes difficult to find the landlord. Why are they shooting themselves in the foot for their premises’ long-term competitiveness!
– Landlords wishing to charge £££ for wayleaves or installing new fttp services. Why are they shooting themselves in the foot for their premises’ long-term competitiveness!
– Agents and lawyers representing landlord wishing to charge £££ for issuing wayleaves/permission.
– Traffic permits for road closures: red routes, busy routes, near important sites, no alternative roads for diversions, for roads just re-surfaced. Probably unavoidable in many areas. Micro trenching. Openreach DPA may help.
– Fibre tax: get rid of it
– Demand: is there sufficient demand in the area. Are people out of contract to switch? Will they sacrifice their bundles/loyalty to get FTTP from another provider?
– Wholesale access to the FTTP networks. Consumers need choice where they may be able to get their bundles and keep their loyalities.
– Alt-net commercial viability: will many be here today and gone tomorrow with unrealistic business plans?
– Overbuild: Why are providers overbuilding first, when there’s plenty of areas not covered?
– Missing/unresponsive landlords for wayleaves. Utility rights?
– Engineering availability: We need more civil engineering firms and fibre specialists
– Customer take up in areas FTTP is high: We need the take up to justify all this effort and feedback revenues into more rollout
– The most difficult areas to connect: Middle of nowhere, complex urban installs – who funds the potential £10,000+ per premises passed? 5G Fixed Wireless Access the answer unless people can pay themselves or the government comes up with a scheme?

Nothing’s a quick fix sadly.
This is a major infrastructure project.
But using my first list, is there anything in there that could help you sooner?

Matt Skipsey
CTO & Head of Giganet
http://www.giga.net.uk

Danny says:

Personally if i was one of these wayleave holders I’d want paying in a different manner. My demand would be as follow dig up as you need and leave it how you found it also hook up my property with your services with 10 years free boradband on the top speeds possible at any one time.

AnotherTim says:

@Matt. I fear that the buzz of FTTP roll-out plans you hear is a bubble that is soon to burst. You do make a lot of good points, but some aren’t easy to solve. Wayleaves are difficult because allowing access to a premises/land can create all sorts of liability issues – insurance companies charge a premium if you have wayleaves, and land owners (understandably) don’t want to foot the extra bill. Demand in rural areas (such as mine) is an impossible problem – there just aren’t enough properties to make commercial sense. Overbuilding makes more commercial sense than rural/difficult builds, but of course creates a race to the bottom as companies compete on price to gain customers – which then reduces the ability to cross subsidize less commercial builds. Altnets tend to be very good at press releases, but not so good at actual builds – e.g. Gigaclear (a major Altnet) in the Fastershire BDUK area managed to pass an additional 2000 or so premises in a quarter – that’s less than 200 per week.
I see the biggest problem in rural areas as the lack of nearby/affordable backhaul. I can’t find any fixed wireless ISPs willing to cover my area as there is no backhaul available, and a community solution isn’t viable as the ECC for backhaul is prohibitive.
Another big problem is the BDUK approach, which has created a large number of small (= uneconomic) pockets of properties that can’t get FTTC. The approach for an area should be all-or-nothing, but is cheapest-only.
Yet another problem is actually being in a BDUK plan, which prevents access to grants and vouchers – I’ve been “in plan” for 6 years, but no progress has been made, and the “planned” build isn’t due to start for another year (if it doesn’t get delayed again).
A further problem is the “wait and see” approach by regulators – I understand that they want to see what commercial builds will achieve, but the only guaranteed outcome of that approach is that those with no superfast solutions get to wait years longer.
From your first list I don’t see anything that will actually help rural areas, apart from the USO which may make more 4G available (5G won’t happen in rural areas for years), but that 4G doesn’t have to be superfast, and I can already get 4G so USO won’t help me.