Booming broadband and the journey to become an ISP


Interview

In this interview, CTO of Giganet, Matthew Skipsey discusses the UK’s rapidly accelerating fibre rollout, as well as the company’s strategic shift to become a consumer ISP

In recent years, the UK fibre industry has been hard at work, transforming the country from one of Europe’s worst fibre performers to one in a far more competitive position. This has been facilitated, in no small part, by the enormous amount of funding pouring into the industry.

“I believe [the UK fibre industry] now has funding committed to cover 84 million premises, which is obviously far in excess of the number of properties we have in the UK. But this will give consumers real choice when it comes to their provider,” explained Skipsey.

In fact, Giganet themselves have pivoted to take advantage of this vibrant funding landscape, transitioning to deploy their own network and sell services directly to consumers. Since then, the business has gone from strength to strength, last year receiving £250 million in funding from Fern Trading to further their rollout.

Giganet is now in the process of expanding its full fibre network to quarter of a million homes in the south of the UK.

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But despite the positive investment landscape, the global economic climate is beginning to ask questions of the UK telecoms industry.

“We’re experiencing a complete storm of factors here, with interest rates being hiked, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, political challenges – there are a lot of headwinds here,” said Skipsey. “But the reassuring thing for consumers is that, as Ofcom have been tracking, if you look at broadband and fixed connectivity, it has mostly stayed flat or even decreased in terms of the pricing.”

This kind of pricing stability has not been seen with other utilities, with commodities like water, electricity, and housing seeing huge jumps in price, particularly over the last year.

But this is not to suggest that the telecoms industry is immune to these macroeconomic pressures, with the telecoms supply chain being hugely impacted by the economic climate.

“We’re doing as much as we can to insulate our customers from those factors,” said Skipsey.

To watch the full interview, please use the link above

How is the rapid rollout of full fibre infrastructure impacting the North of the UK? Join the telecoms industry in discussion in Manchester next year for the second edition of our Connected North conference

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