Companies news June 2016

BT developments:

• Openreach this month announced the first locations that will benefit from a new fibre to the premises (FTTP) product specifically designed for SMEs, offering speeds of up to 1Gbit/s. The first areas include parts of Bath, Bradford, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Westminster, Holborn and the City. The deployment will be focused on SMEs located in high streets, science and business parks and clusters of businesses that do not currently have access to Openreach’s fibre broadband services. See this previous post (more here) for more on BT’s future plans.
• ISP Review and ThinkBroadband reported on BT’s G.fast deployment plans (more on G.fast here). BT intends to deploy G.fast from directly alongside existing street cabinets via extension pods which will allow rapid deployment.
• uSwitch and the Telegraph reported BT’s response to criticisms of the UK’s rural broadband scheme; the company argued that the monies being returned for reinvestment (more here) are indicative of the scheme’s success.

Other companies news this month:

• Virgin Media and the Home Builders Federation announced a partnership to increase delivery of ultrafast broadband services to new homes across the UK. Home Builders Federation member firms account for some 80% of all new homes built in England and Wales in any one year and also announced a deal with GTC later in the month to provide fibre to the premise services to new-build homes nationwide (more here).
• Hyperoptic announced it is to to offer 1Gbit/s services in seven more towns and cities: Portsmouth, Watford, Leicester, Southampton, Slough, Edinburgh and Woking. This expands the company’s footprint to 20 cities and towns.
• ISP Review reported that Gigaclear aims to cover 100,000 homes and businesses by the end of 2017 and also that the company had reached the first 1,000 Gloucestershire premises with fibre to the premises broadband. Gigaclear also announced it will provide services in the Blackdown Hills area of Devon and Somerset.
• Finally the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its determination in relation to appeals from BT and TalkTalk regarding the charges BT is permitted to make for use of its superfast broadband network (more background here). The CMA dismissed BT’s challenges in all but one of the issues it was asked to look at and dismissed the challenges in TalkTalk’s appeal; see commentaries from ISP Review and the Telegraph.