Companies news November 2017

Vodafone and CityFibre announced a new strategic partnership to deliver fibre to the premises (FTTP) infrastructure to up to 5 million UK homes and businesses by 2025. Vodafone will have a period of exclusive rights (predominantly during the build phase of each city network) to market ultrafast consumer broadband services on the FTTP network to be built, operated and owned by CityFibre. Construction of the first phase of deployment to one million premises is due to start in the first half of 2018 and will be largely complete in 2021.

The deal was hailed as being particularly significant in that it presents a direct challenge to Openreach and Virgin Media, creating a third substantial FTTP network in the UK. uSwitch reported that Ofcom had welcomed the deal, describing it as an indicator of the "real momentum" behind full fibre broadband in the UK.

Dark fibre developments: Ofcom launched a new consultation on providing access for other operators to BT’s dark fibre, following a successful legal challenge to its previous proposals. The consultation sets out Ofcom’s proposal to introduce a dark fibre remedy to address BT’s significant market power (SMP) in the provision of wholesale leased lines services of all bandwidths at and below 1Gbit/s in many parts of the UK. Ofcom also introduced a set of temporary rules (details here and here) placing price caps, access requirements and quality standards on BT in these markets. Also see commentary from the Telegraph. Ofcom continues to believe that “introducing dark fibre would promote efficiency and better sustain effective competition than would be possible with active remedies alone”. Its consultation closes on 29th December 2017 and Ofcom plans to publish a statement before the end of the first quarter of 2018.

BT Universal Service Obligation (USO) developments: the Telegraph and ISP Review reported that talks between BT and the government over BT’s offer to deliver the USO (also see this previous post) were close to collapse. The Register reported remarks from Minister for Digital Matt Hancock that discussions were continuing. BBC News reported that giant effigy of an Openreach van was burned at a Devon village November the Fifth bonfire in protest over slow broadband speeds.

Other companies news this month:

• BT published its results for its second quarter to 30th September 2017. It now passes 27.1m properties with its superfast fibre broadband network and expects to reach a million premises with G.fast by the end of 2017/18. Following its consultation on the investment case for FTTP deployment in the UK, Openreach will invite views from communications providers on a more specific set of proposals that cover potential pricing, footprint and a plan for FTTP switchover, by the end of the year. Also see The Register and Computing. BT also announced a further £20 million in ultrafast broadband for Northern Ireland which will predominantly involve the deployment of FTTP technology.
• Liberty Global published Q3 2017 results for Virgin Media, which expanded its network to cover another 147,000 premises during the quarter (also see commentaries from ISP Review and ThinkBroadband). It also announced plans to extend its ultrafast network to up to 16,000 properties in Durham by the end of 2019.
• TalkTalk also published interim results for the 6 months to 30th September 2017, including this update on its FTTP activities: “Take-up of FTTP in York has continued to grow with penetration at over 30% (delivered two years ahead of plan) and the TalkTalk share of the market is significantly ahead of our share of the national broadband market. We began work on extending the network to a further 40,000 premises across the rest of York in October, and expect to complete the build within two years. Beyond this, we continue to actively explore FTTP co-investment opportunities to leverage our clear learnings from York to further cities across the UK.”
• SSE Enterprise Telecoms announced that it has signed an agreement with Thames Water, enabling the distribution of SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ fibre optic cables throughout Thames Water’s waste water network. The company sees the initiative as  a chance to drive new innovation in the market in the light of the successful legal challenge to Ofcom’s dark fibre access proposals (more on this here and here).
• Gigaclear announced award of a contract to the John Henry Group to bring ultrafast full fibre broadband to more than 21,000 properties in some of the most rural parts of the East Midlands. This build will increase Gigaclear’s existing footprint in the district, bringing the total properties it can serve to over 27,000.
• Hyperoptic announced it is now working with 100 UK developers including Barratt London, Berkeley Homes, Crest Nicholson, Great Portland Estates and Stanhope.
• KCOM announced that its £85m Lightstream  FTTP network deployment in Hull will complete by March 2019, covering approximately 200,000 properties in the city.