Companies news April 2017
Ofcom published proposals for improving access to Openreach’s duct and pole infrastructure for other operators, to make it easier and cheaper to provision fibre services to homes and businesses and reducing the country’s historical reliance on Openreach. See this previous post for more on this.
Ofcom and Which? both announced research findings that show consumer broadband providers need to deliver significant improvements to their customer service. See this previous post for more on this.
uSwitch reported that Openreach is to provide more than 240,000 new premises across nearly 10,000 housing developments with access to 1Gbit/s fibre broadband. This work is being carried out as part of an agreement between Openreach with the government and the Home Builders Federation to ensure all sizeable new housing developments are connected to ultrafast fibre broadband.
The Telegraph reported that Openreach is seeking to establish a formal structure for information sharing with Sky, Vodafone and others to build the case for heavy investment in ultrafast broadband. It also reported that while BT, Virgin Media and Sky have agreed to sign up to a voluntary code of practice to return money to customers if there are delays to broadband installation or if fault repairs take too long, TalkTalk has declined to participate.
Gigaclear announced a contract with Herefordshire Council to deliver phase 2 of the Fastershire project, providing full fibre connectivity for more than 8,000 homes across Herefordshire.
CityFibre announced it will provide ultrafast fibre connectivity in Slough and Maidenhead.
Hyperoptic announced it is to provide gigabit connectivity to social housing in Thurrock; at the end of March the company announced it is to provide connectivity to Victoria Centre flats and The Woodlands in Nottingham.
KCOM announced the latest stage of its Lightstream roll-out which will provide ultrafast broadband to 97 per cent of all homes in Beverley. Lightstream can deliver download speeds of 250Mbit/s for residential customers and 1 Gbit/s for businesses; the roll-out in Beverley is part of KCOM’s much larger programme of broadband investment in Hull and East Yorkshire.
Virgin Media announced plans to extend its fibre optic network to up to 108,000 homes and businesses across Kent as part of its Project Lightning network expansion. Virgin Media Business announced that 350Mbit/s is now its standard offering for its business broadband customers.
In its latest quarterly results, Sky reported a 50 per cent increase in Fibre penetration to 24 per cent; also see commentary from Cable.
The City of London Corporation announced a new 15 year contract with Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Ltd in partnership with O2 to deliver a free, public access WiFi network, offering internet access anywhere within the Square Mile.
ISP Review reported that utility infrastructure provider GTC hat has added a fifth ISP, Pure Broadband, to its ultrafast 300Mbit/s open-access fibre to the premise (FTTP) network, which is deployed for new build homes in the UK.
ISP Review also reported that Boundless Networks is to deploy its microwave broadband network in more areas of Craven in North Yorkshire, including Cononley, Silsden and parts of Skipton, and that WarwickNet has connected 168 business parks to high speed broadband.
Nokia and Elisa announced a successful field trial of Nokia's XGS-PON technology which achieved symmetrical 10Gbit/s speeds.
Verizon announced a three-year minimum purchase agreement with Corning Incorporated to provide fibre optic cable and associated hardware for Verizon to provide coverage and capacity for its nationwide wireless broadband network. The agreement calls for Corning to provide and Verizon to purchase up to 20 million kilometres (12.4 million miles) of optical fibre each year from 2018 through 2020, with a minimum purchase commitment of $1.05 billion. Also see commentaries from Ars Technica and CCS Insight.
