The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has posted a small interim update to the data they hold on fixed line home broadband ISP speeds, which reveals that the average (median) UK download speed has increased to 65.3Mbps (up by 10% from 59.4Mbps six months ago) and uploads hit 15.5Mbps (up by 45% from 10.7Mbps). Ofcom’s study […]

Rural network builder and UK ISP GoFibre, which is deploying a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across the North of England and Scottish Borders, has today announced their new full fibre network has started to go live in the Aberdeenshire towns of Portlethen and Newtonhill. The operator, which is currently being supported by […]

Startup Stories

Dutch startup OPT/NET creates AI products for a variety of critical and data-intensive industries, but far from replacing humans, they want to make them superhuman with AI-assistance.

Tell us about your start up
At OPT/NET, we are a fresh entrant into the AIOPs industry. The complexity of IT systems is increasing exponentially. The users running these systems are struggling to keep up. Inevitably, mistakes are made, and costly outages occur. One day of downtime costs large enterprises over 7M$ per day. By leveraging AI, we empower network operators with intelligent data-driven insights so they have the full live picture of everything that’s happening within their networks. We ingest all of the network telemetry (logs, metrics, KPIs, etc) available to deliver real-time proactive intelligence on brewing issues in the network. Our goal is to find the issues before they impact the service and customers.

What is your USP?
We have 3 key technological differentiators:

Our patented AI approach can derive anomalous sequences of events and determine causality between events. This lets operators trace back the impact to the root causes far more efficiently than competing solutions.
Every network is different and no one-size fits all solution will properly work. We’ve built a modular “composable” AI architecture so that we can support any Customer’s IT landscape with “out of the box” capability.
Our approach requires no model training and works with raw data from day 1. The AI detects and clusters anomalous network activity, and we leave the conclusion-making to domain experts whose expertise is retained by the platform post-interpretation.

What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
The Telecom Sector is our primary market of interest. Our main Customers are large Network Operators (CSPs) and our product is best suited to IT-Infrastructure monitoring, making it a great fit for the Telecom industry.

How have you got to your current stage of development?
Our product first started as an Open Source Network management/discovery solution called NG-NETMS. This product was first launched in 2013 and has been downloaded over 200K times with positive reviews. Subsequently, we took part in the European Space Agency’s Technology Transfer program to start developing an AI module for our product by incorporating some of their space-worthy algorithms. Next, we collaborated with the AI institute of the University of Amsterdam (top 5 AI institute in Europe) to further advance our Machine Learning module. Finally, in 2018, we pivoted from a Consulting company to a product-based company to bring our new product: OptOSS AI to the market.

Why did you establish the business?
OPT/NET was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from OPT/NET Consulting to focus on bringing the product to the Telecom industry. The founding team considered that the technology that had been built was a more scalable that providing traditional consulting services. Now that we have several large Telcos using our product, we are glad we made the transition.

Who inspired you?
We were inspired by our own consultants. They were struggling to find solutions on the market that could assist them in their IT-Infra data analysis activities so we started developing internally to assist them. Now, we are inspired by our Customers who are glad about their choice of opting for OPT/NET and often show us how it helped them solve brewing issues in their IT-Infrastructure!

What does the future hold for your business?
We hope to continue to grow! To do so, we are aiming to raise 2M in equity financing. We have our first key customers who are extremely satisfied proving we have a product-market fit. We can continue to grow organically but aim to raise funding to aggressively invest in outbound sales to entrench ourselves in a strong position in Europe for the quickly growing AIOps industry

COMPANY CV
Founded: 2018
HQ: The Netherlands
URL: https://www.opt-net.eu/
CEO and Founder: Taras Matselyukh

OPT/NET will participate in the Startup Village at the Total Telecom Congress, taking place at The RAI this November. If you would like your startup to join them, visit www.totaltele.com/congress for more information.

 

A major newspaper has reported that broadband ISP and mobile giant VMO2 (Virgin Media and O2) has held “initial talks” over the possibility of mounting a £3bn takeover bid for the UK’s third-largest alternative full fibre network (AltNet), CityFibre. But such a deal could face regulatory and competition concerns. The Telegraph (paywall) actually clarifies in […]

Selected customers of UK ISP EE and BT’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based home broadband packages are being invited to take part in a new “Faster Broadband Speeds Trial“, which we suspect will involve the use of Openreach’s new 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps tiers (both offer 120Mbps upstream). At present, the fastest consumer service available on both providers […]

Network operator Netomnia – supported by UK ISP YouFibre – have today announced that their rollout of 10Gbps capable FTTP broadband has been boosted after they completed their latest fundraise of £230m in committed debt financing from a group of six bank lenders (HSBC UK, ING, NIBC, RBC, Standard Chartered, and UKIB). The operator, which […]

News

An Openreach statement issued today announced a delay in the expected launch of Equinox 2 pricing which they had claimed would support customers, with lower prices and “long-term certainty to help them switch to faster, more reliable broadband connections”.

Today’s statement from Openreach said “Whilst we continue to share Ofcom’s initial view that our offer isn’t anti-competitive, it’s important the regulator has time to consider all the feedback it has received fully and fairly, so our discounted Full Fibre prices won’t come into effect on April 1.”

This was a response to Ofcom’s message to the market: “To provide certainty and stability for industry, our view is that it would not be appropriate for the offer to launch until we issue our final decision.”

The change of heart from Ofcom seems at least in part to have been driven by comments from Philip Jansen, CEO of BT Group in an interview with the Financial Times where he claimed “There is only going to be one national network” and questioned the need for multiple providers.

Controversially the article was headlined “BT chief warns Openreach fibre push will ‘end in tears’ for rivals”
Today’s announcement will in particular please the altnets who were claiming via INCA that Equinox2 was putting £25 billion of investment into the UK full fibre infrastructure at risk. INCA CEO, Malcolm Corbett had said that the early decision by Ofcom had shown complete disregard for the “many smaller market entrants and the billions of pounds invested in those networks”.

Quite the bombshell from @Ofcom this morning. I’ll do a write up of my thoughts later today, but one thing that jumped out to me, was the line “we will be vigilant to ensure that all involved stick to the letter and *spirit* of the rules”. That’s new. 1/2

— Tim Creswick (@TimCreswick) March 17, 2023

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Amongst the comments on the decision was Tim Creswick, CEO and Founder of Vorboss who took to Twitter describing the decision as “Quite the bombshell” whilst CityFibre CEO, Greg Mesch, commented “Ofcom appears to be taking industry’s concerns seriously. Taking more time to properly consider the impact of Equinox 2 is the right approach if UK consumers and businesses are to benefit from a healthy competitive market for the long term.”

Hear more about investment in UK full fibre infrastructure by joining us at Connected North, taking place in Manchester on 17 – 18 April 2023

UK ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) last launched a new promotion today that discounts the price of their standalone “Gig1 Fibre Broadband” package – offering average speeds of 1130Mbps down and 52Mbps up – to just £30 per month for the first 6 months of service (£50 thereafter) on a 24-month term. Plus, the setup is […]

O2 (VMO2) has just become the last of the four primary mobile providers to start deploying their ultrafast 5G (mobile broadband) service on the London Underground (tube trains), which have been deployed on the Central Line between Queensway and Holland Park, and on the Northern Line between Kentish Town and Archway. On the Central Line, […]

Rural broadband ISP Airband has announced that they’re currently tackling one of the “most challenging installations” of full fibre technology that they’ve “ever seen” in the historic North Devon (England) village of Clovelly, which sits perched on a cliff-top, complete with steep, narrow cobbled streets and 300 residents. The build appears to form part of […]