Connect Fibre Boost UK Full Fibre Rollout with AI and Automation

Alternative network operator and UK ISP Connect Fibre, which aims to reach 100,000 premises across the East of England with their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, has announced the adoption of Deepomatic’s First Time Right Automation platform to help boost their rollout.

The new platform aims to benefit the operator by automating the control of fibre operations documentation, particularly the paper work related to accessing Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles (PIA), and field engineers’ work. Ideally, this will speed up CF’s processes and “substantially” reduce error-related costs, such as those associated with quality control and site revisits. 

Like most AltNets, Connect Fibre’s quality control process has thus far been a mixture of both manual and semi-automation, both in the back office and on-site, presenting three key challenges:

• The verification process was time-consuming and resource intensive.
• PIA documenting photos often lacked quality or were missing, potentially leading to a high rejection rate by Openreach and penalties for Connect Fibre.
• Errors or oversights in fieldworks were detected too late, necessitating revisits.

The ISP states that producing a full compliance report could take a lengthy amount of time to be fully validated, generating delays in the network deployment. But the new platform should help them to save on both operational costs (e.g. reducing issues with PIA documentation) and time (e.g. enhancing field teams’ first-time right rate, to meet deployment deadlines and generate additional revenue).

Dale Regan, Chief Delivery Officer & Co-Founder at Connect Fibre, said:

“Through this continually evolving collaboration with Deepomatic, we have proven that it is both possible and effective to embed automated quality assurance measures within a multiparty ecosystem, where both the Altnet and multiple build partners working on the same objective can excel in delivering a robust network. We will be looking at deploying the platform across a wider spectrum of areas within the business, as we continue our mission to keep it simple and think outside of the box. ”

The improvement comes shortly after Connect Fibre secured a £33 million (state aid) Project Gigabit contract, which will see them work to deploy their FTTP broadband network to cover 17,000+ premises in hard-to-reach rural areas of Derbyshire (LOT 3) – here.

Residential broadband packages currently start from £25 per month on an 18-month term for a symmetric speed of 150Mbps (inc. free setup and a WiFi 6 router), which rises to £50 for their top 1000Mbps tier and a promise of “no mid-contract price increases“. Plus, there’s a 50Mbps and 150Mbps social tariff option for those on state benefits.