Viewpoint Article 

by Jarlath Finnegan is Group CEO of AllPoints Fibre Networks (APFN)

As the industry approached the launch of One Touch Switch (OTS) on 12 September, there was an increasing amount of commentary on its perceived faults and features. Regardless of which side of that debate we stand, at APFN, we see OTS as an inflection point which should give pause for thought to all of us involved in the industry.  

Over the past ten years, our backers have poured billions of pounds of private sector capital into brand new full fibre infrastructure, which is already benefiting millions of customers. Much delayed and under-publicised, it is a common hope across the industry, government, and the regulator that OTS will encourage more consumers to engage more deeply with the telecoms market. 

But we already know that OTS is not an industry cure-all. None of us should be under the impression that customer take-up of full fibre broadband will rocket from mid-September onwards. To make a more competitive marketplace a reality, we need the government and the regulators to step in. 

At the stroke of a pen, and without spending any money, they could do a lot to help. Ofcom’s new guidance on the use of the word ‘fibre’ in marketing comes into effect four days after the new OTS process goes live. Using the word ‘fibre’ without qualification will now be banned by Ofcom, and according to them, consumers should also be informed about the technology used to deliver their broadband. But the Advertising Standards Authority has declined to follow suit. So providers will be able to market their networks in one way on their websites, and an entirely different way on an advertising billboard. In no other industry would this be tolerable and the government and Ofcom needs to pressure the ASA to change its guidance immediately, as has happened in France and Ireland. 

Secondly, the government has failed to meaningfully support the industry to communicate the benefits of fibre. Successive administrations have overseen a remarkable success story in terms of the rollout. The availability of full fibre connections grew to over 60% in January 2024 according to Ofcom compared to 7% in January 2019. But we need consumers to switch and take advantage of this new technology. If consumers voluntarily move on to faster, more reliable connections, that benefits everyone: they get a better service; productivity increases; and the government can further digitise public services. The government should run a public information campaign to ‘make the switch’, just like it did for the digital tv and radio switchover. For those that need it, the government should also prioritise digital skills training, particularly for those adults who missed out when they were in school. We cannot unlock the full potential of the UK without it. 

Finally, we are approaching another inflection point when the copper networks are switched off and consumers are moved to full fibre networks by their ISPs. Like OTS, this has not received the publicity and scrutiny that it deserves. This is important for Openreach, as well as those that use their networks. There is no point in Openreach, the industry and consumers paying for the costs of running two networks, a 20th century part-copper network based on old landline technology and a modern fibre optic one. At the point of switch off, it is vital that consumers can make an informed choice of network, rather than having their contracts automatically rolled over to a full fibre one by their existing ISP. The government and the regulator should intervene on this now so that the rules are clear before the switch off takes place and we can inject much needed competition into the broadband market. Copper switch-off is a once in a generation opportunity to do it. 

Broadband isn’t generally argued about much in the chambers of Westminster because, for the most part, everyone agrees: it’s a fairly-priced daily essential that facilitates our lives. But there needs to be a healthy broadband market for that situation to continue, and for that, we need the government to get more involved.  

One Touch Switch is being introduced on Thursday 12 September! Get the latest reactions from the UK telecoms industry live at Connected Britain

Jarlath Finnegan is Group CEO of AllPoints Fibre Networks (APFN), which was created from the merger of Giganet, Swish Fibre, Jurassic Fibre and the existing AllPoints Fibre brands. Cuckoo Fibre is also part of the same group. His background is in telecoms and renewable energy infrastructure.

LINX Nairobi is a neutral, multi-site interconnection fabric providing peering services and more for networks wanting to improve performance, increase redundancy and lower latency.

Launched back in November 2023, the new Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is going from strength to strength with a strong community of local Internet Service Providers (ISPs), global content networks and strategic partners already interconnected, and traffic starting to build.

The team at LINX have spent a lot of time with the local engineering community and following interest from key networks located at PAIX it was decided that the infrastructure needed to grow – only 9 months after launch.

PAIX Nairobi NBO-1 is located at the Britam Tower in Upper Hill, Nairobi, the central business district and a known key financial hub for East and Central Africa.

Networks located at the PAIX facility in Nairobi are soon to be just a single cross connect away from peering opportunities with any network present at LINX Nairobi, from global content networks like Meta to local ISPs such as ICON Fiber, Mtaani Telecom, Mymanga Networks and PepeaNet.

LINX Nairobi has a fully interconnected and dual fibre infrastructure between the data centre sites for full resilience and redundancy. The addition of PAIX will enhance the LINX fabric to a 4-site interconnection hub and the installation work is being prepared and looking to go live in the coming weeks.

Emmanuel Makina, Sales Manager of PAIX Data Centres says:

“With our cloud- and carrier-neutral datacentre located in the centre of the business district, we host communities of interest for the financial and content industries, so that includes financial services, advertising, broadcasting, and entertainment companies. The customers that host their mission critical equipment in our facility have a requirement to be online 24×7 in today’s digital economy. They all benefit from being able to connect to multiple networks, easily scale their bandwidth, reduce their connectivity costs, and have the lowest latency to their partners…”

“Further, the PAIX facility is a natural communications hub for Nairobi: in a very central location in Upper Hill, and next to Britam Tower where our customers can colocate their antennas for wireless connectivity to all parts of the city.”

Jennifer Holmes, CCO for LINX comments:

“We didn’t expect to be expanding the LINX Nairobi network this soon, but we like to pride ourselves in our commitment to the local community. They said, we listened. By expanding the peering opportunities to the customers at PAIX we are adding value to the entire LINX Nairobi community and prospective new local and global networks who we are in talks with.”

Wouter van Hulten, CEO & Founder, says:

“PAIX Data Centres is fully committed to the development of Kenya’s digital infrastructure, with support for all the latest AI hardware and software. PAIX Data Centres is invested in by Africa50, a private equity fund in which the Republic of Kenya is a shareholder. We are building and operating the infrastructure to enable Africa’s digital economy, with local datacentres, local teams, and world class operations, all essential ingredients for the developments that lie ahead. We warmly welcome LINX to the PAIX Community in Kenya.”

Mole ploughs broke the ground in Stapleford last week, as Wessex Internet began its physical work to deliver full fibre internet to 14,500 homes and businesses in South Wiltshire.

This work is part of Project Gigabit, a government-funded programme to enable hard-to-reach communities to get fast, reliable broadband. The contract is worth £18.8 million and will see Wessex Internet expanding its existing network in the Wylye Valley, going across the Salisbury Plain, connecting villages surrounding Amesbury, and going as far north as Chisbury and Little Bedwyn. The first communities to be connected will be Stapleford, Wylye and Bapton.

The contract was awarded by the government in March 2024 to be delivered over the next five years. The infrastructure work that started this week follows six months of detailed planning to design the network route, liaison with landowners and communities in the areas that will be connected, and the opening of a new construction base in Codford, where civils operatives delivering the project are based.

Meanwhile, as the network build gets underway to deliver one of Wessex Internet’s latest Project Gigabit contracts in South Somerset, the company has also just reached a significant milestone in delivering its first Project Gigabit project in the North Dorset area, with more than 50% of the properties in this contract now connected. Villages recently connected include Kington Magna, Buckland Newton and Holwell.

All the homes and businesses being connected across South Wiltshire and North Dorset will benefit from full fibre broadband, also known as Fibre to the Premises (FTTP). This means a fibre optic cable goes all the way to each building, rather than stopping at a cabinet down the road. This delivers connection speeds of up to 10Gbps, with far superior speeds and reliability compared to old copper telephone lines.

Minister of State for Telecoms Chris Bryant said:

“Connectivity is a vital part of modern life, for individuals, families, communities, businesses and government. I’m delighted that months of hard work are now paying dividends in South Wiltshire where villages that were once cut off will soon be able to access state of the art broadband.

“This will be a game-changer for residents, not only because it will provide them with faster internet, but because it will help create equal opportunities, boost rural businesses, and ensure our villages aren’t left behind in the digital age.”

Hector Gibson Fleming, CEO of Wessex Internet, said:

“Wessex Internet is determined to continue our mission delivering ultrafast broadband to rural communities that would otherwise be left behind by traditional providers. Supported by the government’s Project Gigabit, we continue this work at pace, and it’s exciting to see milestones being reached in both our first and one of our newest contract areas.

“This is great news for homes and businesses in the North Dorset and South Wiltshire, who will be able to access world-class connectivity and the many economic and social benefits it provides. We will continue working closely with the residents and businesses across these two contract areas, involving them in our planning process and informing them as soon as our future-proofed broadband is available in their communities.”

Wessex Internet’s rollout will continue over the next five years in South Wiltshire and complete within the next two years in Norh Dorset. It will target hard-to-reach rural areas that, without government investment, would have missed out on faster speeds. This gigabit-capable connectivity is being supported by the government to help expand opportunity, reduce inequality and drive economic growth, by making it easier for rural communities to access broadband that will meet people’s needs for decades.

Regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has introduced a device management system (DMS). The NCC DMS is described as a comprehensive central equipment identity register (CEIR) aimed at managing and regulating mobile devices accessing the country’s communication networks.

The initiative is designed to ensure stricter control over mobile devices, to enhance security, and to promote compliance with established regulatory standards.

It will act as a central database for tracking devices across all mobile network operators (MNOs) in Nigeria.

By registering and monitoring device access, the NCC says it seeks to curb the use of unapproved devices and prevent issues such as phone theft and fraudulent activities involving mobile devices.

The regulator explains that the NCC-DMS will acquire the international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) of all devices on the communication network and synchronise with international databases of IMEI repositories. Thus the NCC-DMS will maintain a registry of all communication devices available in the country.

All MNOs in the country are legally obliged to connect to the system. A registration fee structure will be applied to every device registered.

News resource Nairametrics says the NCC first announced plans to deploy the DMS in 2021. Among the reasons given were “to curtail the counterfeit mobile phone market, discourage mobile phone theft, enhance national security, protect consumer interest, increase revenue generation for the government, reduce the rate of kidnapping, mitigate the use of stolen phones for crime, and facilitate blocking or tracing of stolen mobile phones and other smart devices”.

Every reported IMEI for stolen and illegal mobile phones and other smart devices will be blacklisted and shared with all operators across all networks, meaning the blacklisted devices will not work in any Nigerian network.

Three network investment projects from Texas and Mexico to catch up with: … [visit site to read more]

Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), a state corporation that transports, stores and delivers petroleum products to consumers, but that also has a network infrastructure license, says it has onboarded a leading Tier III internet service provider (ISP), Syokinet Solutions, to activate 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps) data capacity on KPC’s fibre optic cable which runs from Mombasa to Nairobi.

The new high-capacity fibre link will, it is claimed, bring fast gigabit internet speeds and unparalleled reliability to homes, businesses and community networks in Kenya’s two largest cities, representing a major advance in Kenya’s digital infrastructure and connectivity goals.

Managing Director Joe Sang says the launch « represents a new milestone for KPC as we strive to expand and upgrade our fibre optic cable in line with our long-term business diversification strategy”.

He suggests that the strategic partnership with Syokinet will unlock additional connectivity and offer high-speed internet services for homes and businesses between Nairobi and Mombasa.

Indeed, the partnership with Syokinet will provide increased backbone capacity on KPC’s fibre, with benefits that include faster gigabit connectivity to households as well as expanded reach for public Wi-Fi services through hotspot and community network growth.

The new fibre link will also see increased diversity and resilience for enterprise data centres, and greater bandwidth availability for local ISPs and community networks in both Mombasa and Nairobi.

The connectivity launch aligns with the Kenyan government’s Digital Superhighway Project via which it aims to increase broadband connectivity across the country through laying 100,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable, establishing 25,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots in market centres across Kenya, and creating 1,450 digital hubs in every ward.

KPC obtained a Network Facility Provider (NFP) – Tier 2 network infrastructure license in 2018 from regulator the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) to lease fibre optic cable along its pipeline network in Kenya from Mombasa to Nairobi – Nakuru – Kisumu and Eldoret towns.

Over the years KPC says it has signed lease agreements with all the country’s leading operators and ISPs to use its fibre optic cable network.

Interview

With Connected Britain just around the corner, Total Telecom caught up with Aprecomm Founder & CEO Pramod Gummaraj to discuss why now is the perfect time to expand into the UK and beyond

Aprecomm was founded in India by ex-Qualcomm employees back in 2016. At that time, the company was focused entirely on the enterprise segment, providing solutions to help service providers and businesses better understand the end-user experience on their networks. This included developing self-healing and self-organising tech to make networks more autonomous and easier to monitor.

“We saw consistent growth in the enterprise market,” said Pramod. “These were customers who really understood the value of having a more intelligent network, in terms of delivering a better user experience”.

But the scope of the company’s ambitions was set to change dramatically with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

“During the pandemic, almost every home also became a small office,” explained Pramod, noting that customers were now intimately aware of their network quality, especially with YouTube videos perpetually buffering and Zoom calls lagging.

“Consumers began holding CSPs to a higher standard,” said Pramod. “Making the shift to the residential side was natural for us and also crucial.”

Since then, the company’s client base has grown enormously, with Aprecomm’s customer experience (CX) suite managing 7+ million locations (homes and businesses combined) globally through more than 45 service providers. The company also partners with over 50 customer premise equipment (CPE) makers and over 180 individual CPE models have been integrated and certified for use with Aprecomm’s CX suite.

Quality of service as a differentiator

Explaining this rapid growth, Pramod explained that network quality and reliability had rapidly become a key differentiator for CSPs in a competitive market.

“Subscriber experience is increasingly a key element and to ensure a quality experience we need networks that can adapt in real-time,” he said. “Customers are willing to pay that extra dollar to ensure that they have a reliable connection.”

“India is a very cost-sensitive market. There are 2,000 to 3,000 Tier 2 CSPs in India, and it’s a similar story in Brazil where there are about 20,000. In these fracture markets, the only way they can compete is on customer service,” he continued.

Indeed, a customer study conducted by the company showed that using their end-to-end Wi-Fi QoE solution could massively decrease network issues for end users, with considerable benefits for the CSP as a result. The study, which examined a CSP with 400,000 customers over one year, saw a 62% truck roll reduction, a 35% improvement in first-call resolution, and a 30% reduction in call resolution time when the Aprecomm suite was used.

Even more crucially, this improved service significantly reduced churn by 20% in the first two months.

“The most important threat in all these markets is churn. There is a customer acquisition cost to gaining a customer, which takes months of revenue to recoup. So, it’s very expensive to lose customers, even if you’re replacing them with new ones. That’s what CSPs are worried about,” said Pramod.

The road to zero-touch

As AI, machine learning, and automation improve, there has long been a discussion about the journey towards zero-touch networks – networks that are entirely autonomous, able to optimise their services for customers and react to issues without human intervention.

For Pramod, the end is in sight.

“The biggest missing piece was understanding the customer experience on a technical level. Once you have that, teaching everything else becomes easier. We now can consider more network parameters on a more granular level, and that makes it easier to automate effectively,” he explained. “Physical damage to the networks will always need a physical response, but I think we’re pretty close to achieving zero-touch networks – a couple of years.”

Expansion plans

Having scaled considerably in India, plans are already in motion for Aprecomm to expand into the UK, the USA, and Latin America. All these markets feature many regional Tier 2 players fighting hard to attract and retain customers, where quality of service would be a key factor.

“The smaller players make up a significant portion of the addressable market, but they’re also a segment that’s been somewhat ignored,” said Aprecomm’s Head of Marketing Communications, Mark Goodburn. “Everyone tends to chase the big players and leave the smaller service providers largely untouched.”

This expansion process has already begun. Earlier this year, the company struck a partnership with Brazilian network solution provider OpenGlobe which is reselling Aprecomm’s CX suite in its territory. The partners hope to target the top 300 CSPs in Brazil.

This week, Aprecomm is turning its attention to the UK market at Connected Britain. The UK market is currently home to around 100 altnets, all of whom are facing a challenging economic environment and growing pressure from giants like Openreach and Virgin Media O2.

“We’ve got the scale and maturity now to expand into these new markets, at a time when there is more focus on customer experience by CSPs and chipset companies than ever,” said Pramod. “Lots of factors are coming together at the right time for us and we’re very excited to be looking at these new markets.”

Want to hear more from Pramod about in-home connectivity and the evolution of customer service? Join Aprecomm on stand #167 at Connected Britain on 11–12 September! Get your ticket today.

Contributed Article

by Mark Turner, Managing Director, M Group Services – Telecom Division

You might know us as Avonline Networks, Magdalene, Morrison Telecom Services or Waldon Telecom but did you know we’re all part of one business?  

Together, we are M Group Services’ Telecom Division. We use our expertise to deliver comprehensive end-to-end services to our clients, including VMO2, Openreach and National Grid.  

M Group Services is the leading essential Infrastructure service provider within water, energy, transport and telecommunications sectors across the UK and Ireland. Collectively, we have over 11,000 employees, 6,000 commercial vehicles, 12,000 items of plant and a turnover of £2bn.  

Our scale, breadth and depth open opportunities for collaboration, creating solutions which deliver efficiently and cost effectively against our client’s needs, and ensure a positive legacy in the communities in which we work.  

We are passionate about protecting our people, the public and the planet.  Alongside our leading safety record, we work to introduce industry-firsts. This has  included our multilingual Safe Working in Civils course, upgrading our fleet, which is led by EV and other sustainable fuels and rolling out comprehensive first aid training for our 2,000+ staff. 

Our Telecom Division provides expertise and services to Fixed, Mobile and Private clients.  

Fixed 

We are building and delivering full fibre networks to over one million premises per year, supporting our clients’ ambitious broadband rollout plans.  

By bringing fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) to homes and businesses, we provide high-quality communications networks for our clients, supporting the wider socio-economic benefits that come with better connectivity for local communities. 

We also deliver repair and maintenance services, at scale, across the country, offering a cost-effective solution to our key clients.  

Many of our clients take advantage of our active technology services,  including core network services, covering switch sites, exchanges and data centres.   We also cover access networks, including cabinets to customer premises and complex business network installations. 

Mobile 

We provide a full end-to-end 5G upgrade capability for our Mobile Network Operator (MNO) and TowerCo clients. This includes site acquisition, design and construction (ADC), fibre backhaul, active equipment commissioning (DIC&I) and full lifecycle Notice to Quit (NTQ)The demand for network densification is growing, so we are installing increasing numbers of small cells for our clients across London and other major cities.   

As the market for Private 5G solutions continues to rise, we are providing a full turnkey service covering survey, design, installation, commissioning and operation.   This exciting new technology is being used in diverse locations such as ports, airports, sports stadia and heavy industry. 

We have a comprehensive high mast capability, with our specialist teams supporting both the onsite and offsite design and build.  Our tallest tower to date is at Bilsdale in North Yorkshire, standing at 308.5m high.  

There is huge importance in supporting our clients to manage the overall cost lifecycle of their networks and sites.  Our divisional nationwide platform provides 24/7 inspection, fault fix, repair and maintenance solutions.  

Private 

Our capital project delivery programmes enable our clients to meet their increasingly complex needs.   Programmes include transforming and upgrading connectivity platforms, extending the life of existing equipment, upgrading network security, improving monitoring and control of assets and moving towards net zero targets.  

Our Network Operations and Maintenance (NOAM) capability forms part of our divisional service platform, offering a comprehensive set of services including both shared and dedicated NOCs, as well as national 4-hour fault fix. 

Want to find out more? 

We’d love to tell you more about how we can help design, build, connect, operate and maintain your network! Come and visit us on stand 79 at Connected Britain on 11 and 12 September at London Excel.  

Five interesting projects to catch up with: … [visit site to read more]