Companies news May 2017

BT & Openreach developments:

• BT announced its results for the fourth quarter and year to 31 March 2017, reporting that its superfast fibre broadband network now passes more than 26.5m premises and its ultrafast broadband deployment now passes 500,000. At the same time Openreach announced a new consultation with its communications provider customers on options for future investment in Britain’s digital infrastructure, including plans to explore support for a large-scale ‘full fibre’ broadband network and on new technology to deliver faster speeds to the 3% of the UK currently without access to 10Mbit/s connectivity or above.
• Ofcom announced a further development in relation to BT’s overcharging by approximately £95 million for Ethernet services during the period 2006/07 to 2010/11. Following  a ruling by the Court of Appeal  BT may now be required to pay an additional £22 million as interest on the overcharge amount (also see commentary from ISP Review).
• Ofcom also opened a new investigation exploring whether BT complied with quality of service requirements for the provision of wholesale Ethernet services in the period 28 April 2016 to 31 March 2017.
• ISP Review reported that TalkTalk is disputing the amount of compensation being offered by BT in relation to the compensation requirements imposed by Ofcom in March 2017. This relates to BT’s use of the deemed consent mechanism with regard to the compensation payable  for delays in connecting high speed Ethernet services (more background on this here). It also reported that Sky, Vodafone and TalkTalk are unhappy with Ofcom’s decision not to impose its wholesale price reduction on BT’s 40Mbit/s fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) service until 2018: the operators argue this could cost consumers £140m. The Financial Times later reported that Openreach is to reduce its wholesale price by 91p below the current charge control, generating savings of £10m.
• ISP Review reported BT’s early market deployment wholesale pricing for its G.fast broadband service and introductory pricing for its 160Mbit/s and 330Mbit/s fibre to the premise (FTTP) broadband services.
• BBC News reported on BT’s further trials of long reach VDSL in a number of Scottish villages; this follows tests in the Hebrides announced in August 2016.
• ISP Review reported on a new BT trial that could allow G.fast technology to share the same spectrum as existing fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) services, which in the future might help to boost speeds beyond 330Mbit/s.
• ISP Review also reported that BT has reduced its costs for U.K. Community Fibre Broadband Partnerships, following revision of its payback assumptions.

Other companies news this month:

Virgin Media announced its results for Q1 2017: the company had 5.8 million cable customers and provided mobile voice and data services to 3.0 million subscribers as of 31st March 2017. It also warned that the pace of its Project Lightning roll-out is slowing; see commentaries from the Telegraph, ThinkBroadband and ISP Review. Liberty Global (which owns Virgin media) announced that  the economic impact of its investment in broadband infrastructure between the start of 2013 and the end of the first quarter of 2017 generated social benefits worth €7 billion in Europe, according to analysis by Oxera Consulting. The report follows on from the November 2016 launch of Liberty Global’s GIGAWorld initiative; more background on this here.

Gigaclear announced  the 10,000th customer to go live on its ultrafast broadband service, located in a village near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. The company also announced £111 million in additional equity funding to build new full fibre networks in rural areas and the 5,000th property in West Berkshire to have access to its network, as part of the Superfast Berkshire project.

Vodafone announced its results for the year ended 31st March 2017: the company had 9.5 million 4G customers at the end of this period, with 4G coverage at 96%. It also “continued to gain good momentum in consumer broadband with 216,000 customers by the end of the period (Q4: 33,000 net additions), of which 163,000 are consumer customers.”

Hyperoptic reported that over a hundred housing developments across Manchester are now live with gigabit connectivity. Another 60 developments are currently undergoing installation or are scheduled for installation in the next six months.

Finally, Lightwave, ISP Review and Point Topic reported on the development of terabit DSL by ASSIA: “Extreme high frequency sub-millimetre waves can increase single-line data rates to terabits/second at 100 meter lengths on ordinary twisted pair phone wire.  Speeds of 100 Gigabits/second can be achieved at distances over 300 meters, and speeds of 10 Gigabits/second can be achieved at distances over 500 meters.”