Connexin CEO on busting a monopoly

Connnexin's mission to loosen KCOM's grip on Hull's connectivity market will shortly come to fruition, according to CEO Furqan Alamgir.

The challenger altnet is buoyed by £80m investment from Whitehelm Capital and is currently building a full fibre, 10Gbps capable network in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire. The build is well underway, with areas in East Hull already able to get Connexin Fibre.

“In 2022 we break the KCOM monopoly in Hull,” CEO Furqan Alamgir told Fibre Provider. “This is a real milestone not just for us as a local Hull-based company, but also for the region which for years has had no real choice."

Connexin has been working since 2017 towards making Hull the UK’s first Smart City following multiple contract wins with the City Council. The work sees Connexin creating IoT solutions to connect everything from bin sensors to salt gritters.

Furqan said: “Five years on and we’re still doing all these things – but we’re elevating them. Constantly growing and changing the game through innovation, whether it’s Smart Cities or broadband in our mission to simplify technology to connect the real world with the digital world to improve the way we live.”

The diversity of Conenxin’s portfolio is a deliberate strategic move by Furqan as he looked at different ways to create value from connectivity following the acquisition of a Fixed Wireless Access company in 2010.

The buy turned Connexin into an ISP overnight as it acquired hundreds of broadband customers overnight and became responsible for keeping them online. The internet side of Connexin soon grew faster than its traditional voice and software market.

“I then started to think, ‘What more can we do with connectivity?’ said Furqan. “We connect people and things. How can we leverage this connectivity to create more value in many places?”

The last question stands as a warning to altnets as Furqan notes there is only so much value that can be captured in the home by an ISP. “In my view, alt nets will need to diversify and look to other use cases that can be delivered by the networks they build,” he said.

“Connexin is in a fortunate position as we build programmable infrastructure using a network of networks approach and we see the fibre network as more of a data motorway to enable all of our other Smart city and IoT use cases vs it being just a network focused on connecting consumers.”

Furqan’s drive to make processes quicker and more efficient harks back to the entrepreneurial spark that he felt during his time in medicine. He said: “Over time, working as a surgeon got very repetitive, 3 surgeries in the morning and then another three in the afternoon – but the entrepreneur in me was always thinking ‘How can we make this quicker and more efficient?”

It was during his time studying for his medical degree at Imperial College London that Furqan met business partner Alex Yeung and founded Connexin, which started out with voice and software services, providing an online platform that allowed people to call others over the internet.

“It was a bit like Skype before Skype,” said Furqan. “Eventually enough people were signing up and we started to charge people a small fee, it continued to grow and soon enough we had founded Connexin.”

Fast forward to the current day and Furqan and Yeung are dealing with technology that did not exist when they started putting a name to their operation. “At this point, every day at Connexin can be something different. One hour it’s a call with our investors about the fibre rollout, looking at where we go next and then the next hour I’m speaking to our IoT Team, discussing Smart Health and patient sensors.”

“For me, my priority is supporting each team and their current projects. We’ve built this dream team that ‘Gets Sh*t Done’ and I step in where they need me.”

Furqan states that the current hurdles that his fibre dream team must get over are threefold. Talent availability, supply chain and wayleaves.