Companies news July 2016

BT/Openreach: this week Ofcom set out its proposals for reforming Openreach, making it a legally separate company from the rest of BT – see this previous post for more on this. ISP Review reported on BT’s G.fast trials in Huntingdon, Swansea and Gosforth: overall 75% of lines were able to deliver more than 300Mbit/s download (30-50Mbit/s upload). ISP Review also reported that new participants in BT’s fibre to the premises (FTTP) trial in Bradford will now benefit from upload speeds of up to 220Mbit/s, faster than originally expected (more background on this here). Openreach also announced it had begun trialling new, simplified duct and pole sharing processes with five communications providers (CPs) across the UK (again, see Ofcom’s proposals for reforming Openreach for more context on this, particularly this progress update).

CityFibre this month announced a new partnership with Gigaclear which will “help to dramatically accelerate the roll-out of next generation ultrafast internet access to hundreds of thousands of rural homes and businesses across the UK”. CityFibre also announced that Milton Keynes will become the UK’s latest Gigabit City: “CityFibre will be making over 160km of pure fibre network available to businesses, schools and colleges throughout the city via its city launch partner dbfb and education partner Exa Networks.” In addition it reported that Peterborough City Council is to connect a further 220 new sites to its Gigabit City network and also that Bristol’s ultra-fast fibre network is now live with the first businesses connected. The Telegraph reported that CityFibre has launched an action in the High Court against Ofcom in relation to its proposals to provide access to BT’s dark fibre (more background on this here and here).

Virgin Media announced the next 30 communities to benefit from “an ultrafast broadband and entertainment boost” as part of its Supercharging Local Communities initiative. They are expected to be connected by spring 2017. The company also announced plans to connect tens of thousands more businesses to ultrafast broadband as part of its £3 billion Project Lightning network expansion by the end of 2019: “Initially targeting underserved business parks and office blocks within reach of its existing optical fibre network, Virgin Media Business will build its 300Mbps network to the first 9,000 businesses in the next six months beginning with two business parks in Andover, Hampshire.” In addition the next phase of its Project Lightning network expansion will provide ultrafast broadband to some 450,000 new homes and businesses in London when complete in 2018.

Other companies news this month:

• Hyperoptic announced it is to expand its gigabit network following an investment of £21 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to provide 1 Gbit/s fibre broadband to more than a half-a-million homes in cities across the UK.
• Vodafone announced that its superfast fibre broadband and landline phone services are now available to small businesses across the UK.
• Utilities infrastructure provider GTC announced a new contract for the provision of gas, electricity and fibre networks to a major residential-led development by Bovis Homes in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: “Stanton Cross, a £900m development of 3,650 homes and 1.55m sq ft of commercial space will be future-proofed by GTC in terms of both the electricity and fibre connections.”