Interview

In this interview, CTO of Giganet, Matthew Skipsey discusses the UK’s rapidly accelerating fibre rollout, as well as the company’s strategic shift to become a consumer ISP

In recent years, the UK fibre industry has been hard at work, transforming the country from one of Europe’s worst fibre performers to one in a far more competitive position. This has been facilitated, in no small part, by the enormous amount of funding pouring into the industry.

“I believe [the UK fibre industry] now has funding committed to cover 84 million premises, which is obviously far in excess of the number of properties we have in the UK. But this will give consumers real choice when it comes to their provider,” explained Skipsey.

In fact, Giganet themselves have pivoted to take advantage of this vibrant funding landscape, transitioning to deploy their own network and sell services directly to consumers. Since then, the business has gone from strength to strength, last year receiving £250 million in funding from Fern Trading to further their rollout.

Giganet is now in the process of expanding its full fibre network to quarter of a million homes in the south of the UK.

But despite the positive investment landscape, the global economic climate is beginning to ask questions of the UK telecoms industry.

“We’re experiencing a complete storm of factors here, with interest rates being hiked, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, political challenges – there are a lot of headwinds here,” said Skipsey. “But the reassuring thing for consumers is that, as Ofcom have been tracking, if you look at broadband and fixed connectivity, it has mostly stayed flat or even decreased in terms of the pricing.”

This kind of pricing stability has not been seen with other utilities, with commodities like water, electricity, and housing seeing huge jumps in price, particularly over the last year.

But this is not to suggest that the telecoms industry is immune to these macroeconomic pressures, with the telecoms supply chain being hugely impacted by the economic climate.

“We’re doing as much as we can to insulate our customers from those factors,” said Skipsey.

To watch the full interview, please use the link above

How is the rapid rollout of full fibre infrastructure impacting the North of the UK? Join the telecoms industry in discussion in Manchester next year for the second edition of our Connected North conference

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Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

The post Booming broadband and the journey to become an ISP first appeared on Total Telecom.

INTERVIEW

We had the pleasure of catching up with DB Broadband’s CEO Christian Humpert ahead of next week’s Connected Germany which is taking place next week at the Mainz Congress Hall on December 6-7.

Can you introduce yourself and your role?

My name is Christian Humpert and I have been Managing Director of DB broadband since March 2021. Initially responsible for Operations (COO), before taking over as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in August 2021.

Before joining Deutsche Bahn, I spent over 20 years in the Telco industry, more than 12 years in various management positions at Vodafone in Germany and abroad.

How does DB Broadband fit into Germany’s mobile network ecosystem?

DB broadband is a 100% subsidiary of DB Netz AG and markets free dark fiber capacities from Deutsche Bahn’s fiber network to telecommunications companies.

With our nationwide fiber footprint of over 22,000km, which will expand to a total of 33,400 km until 2027, we enable telco companies building out fiber access networks in Germany.

Mobile network operators (MNOs) use our dark fiber for mobile backhaul, connecting towers quickly and cost-efficiently. We delivered several projects to MNOs in 2022 and thus consider ourselves an enabler for the 5G roll-out in Germany.

What have been the most interesting & innovative use cases in mobile connectivity you’ve seen within Germany in the last year?

To achieve ambitious climate and digitization targets, Germany needs 5G alongside the tracks. Seamless connectivity while traveling in our trains is our goal. We share that goal with the MNOs and are constantly working on synergies and efficiencies across sector boundaries– to the benefit of our common customers. DB successfully closed agreements with major MNOs to enable gigabit connectivity on large parts of the railway tracks. Further discussions on how to make best use of further infrastructure investments across the sectors are ongoing.

What are you most looking forward to at Connected Germany?

Meeting my industry colleagues and partners to exchange ideas about future projects in 2023. Of course, I am looking forward to the panel discussion. I am excited to hear how the other panelists are approaching this topic.

You can hear from Christian and the rest of our amazing speaker line-up by securing your place for Connected Germany – just follow the link to get your pass.

The post “Seamless connectivity is our goal” first appeared on Total Telecom.

News

The Federal Supreme Court has rejected Swisscom’s appeal, leaving the operators fibre expansion

At the end of 2020, the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) announced the launch of an investigation into Swisscom’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) expansion using point-to-multipoint (P2MP), suggesting that this topology was a risk to market competition.

P2MP topology involves building on the existing network, with a single fibre line running from the exchange to the local cable duct before branching off to serve multiple customers.

This is opposed to point-to-point (P2P) topology, where each customer is connected to the exchange directly with their own fibre line.

Swisscom argues that this P2MP topology is very efficient and less complex, allowing them to rollout networks more economically, even in remote regions. They note that P2MP topology has “gained international acceptance in recent years” and is “only criticised in Switzerland, which we cannot understand”.

COMCO, on the other hand, holds that Swisscom’s rollout strategy centring on P2MP will make it difficult for smaller providers without their own network to compete effectively.

As a result, COMCO prohibited Swisscom from marketing its P2MP connections until the investigation is complete. This has effectively frozen the roughly 500,000 P2MP access lines the operator currently has installed – a figure that has been increasing by roughly 70,000 each quarter.

Swisscom challenged this decision in court, having their first appeal rejected by the Federal Administrative Court last year.

Since then, the company has escalated its complaints to Switzerland’s highest court, but this week they too have rejected the appeal.

“The Federal Supreme Court rejects Swisscom’s appeal in connection with the precautionary measure imposed by the Competition Commission (WEKO) for the expansion of the fibre-optic network. The decision of the Federal Administrative Court, in which it confirmed the provisional WEKO ban, is not arbitrary,” said the court in a statement.

In a statement, Swisscom says they accept the ruling, noting that they had already begun reassessing their fibre network expansion strategy to reduce their reliance on P2MP topology.

Following this strategi shift, Swisscom has subsequently lowered its targets for FTTH coverage to 50–55% of homes by 2025 and 70–80% by 2030.

Rollout capex will remain unchanged.

The final ruling by COMCO on the legality of Swisscom’s use of P2MP topology is expected to be announced early next year.

Also in the news:
SKT takes its Ifland metaverse platform global
CMA probes Apple and Google over browser “duopoly”
Vodacom launches National Relay Service to boost digital inclusion

The post Court rules against Swisscom in FTTH expansion case first appeared on Total Telecom.

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