INCA Continues Work to Standardise Wholesale Full Fibre Among UK Altnets

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA), which represents many of the UK’s alternative broadband networks, has today provided a progress update on their work to standardise wholesale access (‘Wholesale Standards Initiative‘) and make it easier for retail ISPs to purchase services from such operators.

The initiative, which first launched a year ago (here), helped to establish clear commercial and technical frameworks for wholesale access. The work has now evolved into a cross-industry effort, involving some of the leading wholesale networks, retail ISPs, aggregators and solution providers.

At its core, the initiative has been working to provide all industry players with a “simple, common baseline of language and understanding” that can be used in framework contracts and supported by a detailed set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

The latest development in this effort is that supporting members are now working to create a Common Care Framework. This is said to be designed to ensure services are supported by consistent processes, as well as a smooth, predictable, and reliable service experience being available regardless of the underlying network provider. An initial set of draft technical APIs have already been produced to support these principles.

Max Fernando, Chair of the Wholesale Standards Initiative, said:

“The initiative has made significant progress in just a year and is well placed to boost the marketplace by enabling ISPs, aggregators and Altnets to interconnect on a common platform. This in turn helps to facilitate integration across the industry and add value and enhance the quality of service that the sector can offer to residents and businesses.

The Altnet market is rapidly shifting from a focus on building networks to serving end users — and with it, wholesale standards need to evolve to ensure that the full potential of UK’s fibre footprint is unlocked. Previously, retail ISPs have pointed out the costs and complexity associated with needing to onboard new networks – the initiative aims to tackle these issues head on.”

The goal of all this seems to be to align the UK’s fibre market with similar models in Spain and Sweden, where independent standards have helped to drive efficiency and support aggregators. The success of the UK’s initiative has already attracted some of the UK’s leading aggregators, including AllPointsFibre Networks, Zen Internet, PXC and ITS Technology. It’s also supported by a growing ecosystem of solutions providers, including Sonalake, Fibre Cafe, NetAdmin and CWP, who plan to embed the standards into their UK market solutions.