XtndNet Launch Hybrid ADSL, Mobile and Satellite Broadband for UK Rural Areas

A new provider called XtndNet claims to have launched a new ISP network for serving “forgotten broadband customers” in remote rural parts of the UK, which adopts a “hybrid” approach that combines mobile broadband (4G / 5G) with fixed line ADSL and satellite connectivity in order to offer “typical” download speeds of 25Mbps.

According to the PR spin, XtndNet is the product of three other companies – Arabsat, Developing Infrastructure, and Forsway. The network itself will be primarily powered, they claim, by Arabsat’s BADR-7 High Throughput Satellite, based on Forsway’s Xtend platform, and is “available now in the United Kingdom and Ireland” (Germany, Scandinavia, the Baltics, and Africa will follow in the next few months).

The idea of a hybrid network like this is actually nothing new. In the distant past, we can recall seeing a number of one-way satellite broadband services, where fixed copper ADSL lines handled the upstream connection (better for latency) and the satellite handled the downstream. The only difference this time seems to be that they’ve also managed to integrate mobile as a terrestrial option.

So far as we can tell, XtndNet will offer this new service to retail ISPs as a wholesale product, which can then be sold on to consumers.

Travis Mooney-Evans, Project Designer and XtndNet CEO, said:

“The key to the XtndNet project was finding a satellite operator who could see the opportunity. Most satellite operators are happy to do the same thing everyone else does, and it takes a visionary operator to take a risk on something different — and Arabsat is that visionary operator.”

However, some may well view this as being little more than an attempt to resurrect a technological dead-end, which never took off the first time and seems unlikely to make much of a dent now. Paying for multiple connections – just to deliver a relatively mediocre speed – usually results in an expensive and undesirable product. You might also end up being hobbled by the upstream weaknesses of rural ADSL or mobile, albeit with better latency than satellite.

The next issue is that Arabsat’s BADR-7, while reasonably capable so far as GEO satellites go, is not actually listed as being able to serve the UK (see here) – it’s area of coverage is mostly limited to North Africa and Southern Europe (maybe they meant BADR-6?).

On top of that, none of the companies involved will be particularly familiar to consumers (credibility is something that needs to be built) and the operator’s website, which feels like a basic holding page, provides almost next to no solid technical details to help illustrate how they’ve implemented the hybrid approach.

Suffice to say, we suspect that many people is remote areas would rather try their luck with 4G (coverage allowing) or an existing two-way satellite broadband solution than adopt this service, while those with deeper pockets will no doubt see plenty of attraction from Starlink’s LEO ultrafast broadband satellite service, which is significantly more capable than the proposed solution above.

But right now the biggest roadblock is that there don’t appear to be any supporting ISPs or publicly available packages to take, thus there’s nothing practical yet for a consumer to compare against.