New UK Wholesale Operator Digital Infrastructure to Rollout FTTP

A new Middlesex-based network operator called Digital Infrastructure (DI) has today cropped up with an ambition to deploy a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network for “areas currently not served by such networks“, including homes, businesses and others in selected urban and suburban areas.

The new proposal was revealed as part of the provider’s request for Code Powers from Ofcom (here), which are often sought by new and existing operators in order to help speed-up the deployment of new networks and cut costs by reducing the number of licenses needed for related UK street works.

The Executive Chairman of DI, Carlos Bock PhD, was kind enough to clarify that their plans are a bit more orientated to the side of business connectivity than the regulator’s document might suggest. DI is essentially a wholesale operator that will deploy fibre infrastructure to connect mobile termination points, towers and other 5G equipment through PIA (i.e. harnessing Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles to run their own fibre).

Additionally, it will have a wholesale catalogue of services to provide capacity and wavelength services to UK ISPs and data centres. This project aims to fill the gap between access infrastructure (out of the scope of DI) and the existing backbone available. It will have a nationwide approach, mainly focused in suburbs of the main cities.

The company itself was only incorporated on 30th June 2020 and as such they’re still going through an establishment process, which among other things means that they don’t yet have a website etc. A new management team is also being setup to help push the project forward, which we understand already has some funding behind it from investors (details are under NDA).

Apparently, all of this is due to get off the ground during early 2021, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for that. Mind you it can be a bit awkward writing sentences about a company with a very general name like ‘Digital Infrastructure‘ and we note that they aren’t the only one using that title (example).

Finally, the operator has also indicated that they might build a Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) network, which will either occur in locations where fibre deployment is not feasible or in the same locations as it deploys FTTP so as to “offer wireless connectivity as an additional service.”