ISP Telcom to Boost Fibre Rollout in Manchester and North West

UK ISP Telcom has today announced that they intend to “expedite” their roll-out of a 10Gbps capable “full fibre” and broadband network to cover “hundreds of residential and commercial premises” in Manchester and the wider North West of England, although details of their exact rollout plan remain unclear.

At present the provider tends to be focused upon connecting business and public sector sites via new and existing Dark Fibre infrastructure, although they’ve also connected some big residential apartment buildings (MDUs) via their sub-brands, such as Black Fibre and Velocity Fibre. “Our goal is to reduce costs and to facilitate broader access to services in areas once monopolised by a small number of providers,” said the ISP.

Apparently their expansion plans have just been given a boost after Ofcom approved their earlier request for Code Powers, which can help to speed-up the deployment of new fibre optic networks and cut costs by reducing the number of licenses needed for street works.

Sean Anstee, Director of Telcom Infrastructure, said:

“This is another massive step forward for us as a business, we are excited to be given these powers from Ofcom. Building fibre networks enables us to provide communities and businesses with access to affordable ultrafast internet, powered by our own fibre infrastructure network.

This is a huge vote of confidence in our plans from Ofcom and we are looking to develop new networks across the North West in 2020. Our goal is to reduce costs and to facilitate broader access to services in areas once monopolised by a small number of providers.

More broadly, this is a huge moment for the wider Telcom Group, as these powers enable our different businesses to complement each other and so that we are uniquely positioned in our sector as a full stack, end-to-end connectivity provider. This means we provision the entirety of a customers internet connection, eliminating costs and offering greater levels of service, affordability and reliability.”

Telcom already has fibre networks in Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool and London. In 2020 the team will now aim to bring “affordable [open access] fibre connectivity” to more of the North West and Midlands.