Research Round-up September 2024
- Veronica Speiser
- Oct 7, 2024
- 5 min read
Broadband speeds and the UK election; What is Overbuild?; Point Topic Co-Authors 2024 Broadband Coverage in Europe Report; Point Topic Roadworks Data; Point Topic joins EuroISPA; Connecting the Dots - A comprehensive perspective on the broadband market backed by an ontology; UK telecoms sector news; government and Ofcom updates
Key publication of the month:
Over the past few months, Point Topic has developed a tool to give our clients a new edge in competitor analysis for the highly competitive UK broadband market.
Leveraging authoritative open data sources from the four home nations, we have developed our own approach to filtering and processing APIs and feeds of roadworks data to identify the most relevant events with direct relation to the broadband industry.
By filtering and labelling events, formatting data into an accessible and relevant format, as well as adding the most useful geo fields, we have created a new product that directly caters to our clients in the broadband industry.
This tool, already used by a select group of clients, allows users to see roadworks by competitors across the UK. A powerful predictor for future deployment and infrastructure roll-out, this allows users to understand where broadband operators are operating and planning to deploy months or years before ready-for-service availability begins.
Key September telecoms sector news
BT Group News
16 September – Openreach began its FTTP build programme in the rural Scottish Highland town of Dingwell, with roll-outs extending to Fort William later in the autumn. Across the Highland region, around 28,000 properties can now connect to Openreach’s full fibre network, with more than 50 per cent already moving to the ultrafast technology.
The company is also building fibre to some properties in Auldearn and Spean Bridge as part of the Scottish Government’s Reaching 100% programme. Further R100 upgrades are due to start in Nairn, Invergarry and villages in the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the coming months.
24 September – Openreach announced that its £42m full fibre network had passed 70% of premises in Kirklees, West Yorkshire.
23 September – BT Group launched £4m Apprenticeship Fund to boost local skills and support small businesses.
24 September – BT Group’s Digital Unit launched ‘GenAI Gateway’ platform, powered by AWS, accelerating the company’s safe adoption of generative AI at scale
27 September – BT announced a number of changes to its Strategy and Change (S&C) and Digital teams that will integrate our strategy and innovation teams and enable the acceleration of its digital transformation. The new S&C team has integrated all strategy work across BT Group and it has responsibility for driving BT’s large transformation projects that will deliver improved customer experience and connectivity. In addition, BT Group’s product innovation and technology partnerships capability will move under the remit of the S&C team so that it sits at the centre of its strategy.
30 September - BT get £105m for first sale of old UK copper telecoms cables.
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) News
2 September – Virgin Media O2 seeks £1bn to support UK NetCo wholesale venture.
11 September – nexfibre launched partnership with UK Youth to offer 1,000 youth centres full fibre broadband from Virgin Media O2.
18 September – EkkoSense, a global leader in the provision of AI-powered data centre optimisation software, has worked with Virgin Media O2 to help the company make data centre cooling energy savings worth in excess of £1m per year.
26 September – VMO2 announced that it had passed an additional 11k premises in Chester (Northwest England), on behalf of nexfibre.
CityFibre (CF) News
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Independent Operators (Altnets) News
12 September – Hyperoptic launched its Managed Wi-Fi service, delivering uninterrupted, high-speed internet across residential developments. The upgraded service ensures reliable, seamless connectivity for residents, staff, and guests throughout entire sites, supported by cutting-edge technology and 24/7 customer support.
14 September – iDNET launched both a 1.8Gbps (advertised as 1.6Gbps) and 2.3Gbps (2Gbps) symmetric speed package via FullFibre Limited‘s (Fibre Heroes) new network, which currently covers 380,000 UK premises across parts of 170 towns.
16 September – Hyperoptic announces that its CEO and co-founder, Dana Tobak CBE, has been appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Technology Committee at Helios Towers plc. Helios Towers is an independent telecommunications infrastructure company focused on advancing mobile communications across Africa and the Middle East.
16 September – LightSpeed Broadband opened their network up for use by rival ISPs and businesses via a new wholesale division – LightSpeed Networks.
23 September – Leicester-based UK broadband ISP Gigabit Networks confirmed to ISPreview that, despite putting their best efforts toward attempting to refinance the business, the provider was ultimately unsuccessful and recently appointed a licensed insolvency practitioner to help navigate the situation.
30 September – Pulse Fibre announced that they’ve signed a new deal with property developer Cavanna Homes to extend their service and cover new-build homes in Dorset, starting with the new development at Warmwell Rise (Crossways, Dorchester) in Dorset (England).
Other News
12 September – One Touch Switch via TOTSCo launched after 17 months of delay. The service launched with 167 brands in the live directory (up from 21 pre-launch). Over 130 brands joined us via a MAP, demonstrating the crucial role MAPs play in allowing large sectors of industry to implement OTS.
More than 90 brands used the hub to send messages, and users placed 4,233 switch orders during the day, with 271 successful completions. In total, 43,000 messages were processed through the hub which performed well-within expected latency.
21 September – The Welsh Government issued a progress update on their Local Broadband Fund (LBF), which was launched in 2020 and has so far allocated £12m through four funding phases, to help local authorities and social enterprises to deliver faster broadband networks to underserved areas. The scheme has delivered gigabit access to 153 premises to date, with a further 632 gigabit capable premises in the pipeline and has delivered superfast broadband at sub-gigabit speeds to 125 premises, with a further 693 premises in the pipeline.
24 September – The state-aid backed Superfast North Yorkshire (SFNY) project, which was supported by £100m of investment (£85m from public sources), has finally reached completion and helped more than 200,000 extra premises to access faster broadband speeds via a mix of different technologies (FTTC, FTTP, Fixed Wireless etc.) and operators (Openreach and Quickline).
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