Don’t wait until the switch-off is in sight, urges CityFibre Head of Wholesale and Carrier, Andrew Wilson.

CityFibre’s ambitious Full Fibre rollout remains on track to cover one third of the UK by 2025. The infrastructure builder has already passed 1.5m homes across 60 locations, of which 1.3m are ‘Ready For Service’, and is working with 29 construction partners to ensure its £4bn investment programme keeps pace.

Head of Wholesale and Carrier, Andrew Wilson expects to see the 2025 transition to Full Fibre proceed as expected but urges wholesale partners to be proactive in capitalising on this opportunity.

“Don’t wait until the PSTN switch-off is within sight,” he said. “By then, your existing customers will already be deep into researching their options and considering their alternatives, so the market opportunity will already be shrinking. If you want to move your customers to Full Fibre, do it now!”

Following the pandemic, businesses are reassessing their connectivity requirements and are changing working practices. “As we are seeing increased adoption of popular video conferencing systems and high-bandwidth cloud-based applications, now is the time to have the conversation with your customers,” he added.

In support of partners, CityFibre has developed a new Business FTTP service to help them make the most of the hybrid working demand.

Wilson said: “The priority for us right now is supporting our partners and ensuring they are equipped with everything they need to migrate existing customers to Full Fibre, as well as win new business in the growing market. That includes making sure they have the right IT stacks and infrastructure to entice the market and enough premises and opportunities to sell to.

“That’s why we are focused on our aggressive build plan, providing our new Business FTTP services as soon as we can and ensuring partners have the market intelligence to target opportunities effectively.”

A cohesive altnet infrastructure must be the dream

As CityFibre and many other infrastructure builders continue to accelerate at pace, Wilson highlights the value of working together and collaborating to expand coverage by sharing network access, increasing availability for customers and helping to control build costs and investment requirements.

“A model of altnet infrastructure providers working together throughout the UK has to be the dream, maximising accessibility and choice,” he said.

“The UK’s infrastructure providers are currently in the thick of building their networks to serve customers with Full Fibre. That takes time and we’re all impatient to get the job done. However, it’s not about how quickly we build that’s the critical element of all this, it’s about ensuring we do it properly, focus on quality and get it right first time.”

Wilson’s vision points to a framework that avoids overbuild and ensures fibre hits as many premises as possible. “It’s in no-one's interest to duplicate builds and coverage or to miss out areas completely,” he added. “That’s why the altnet community needs to work together to ensure we achieve as close to 100% UK coverage as possible, provide customer choice and encourage innovation.”

“It's understandably a challenge for the industry to reach an agreement on standards alone,” he said. “It's inevitable that at some point in the future these various networks will converge either through collaboration or consolidation and, if not managed appropriately, this could cause more challenges for the network builders and potentially for their customers.”

Wilson joined CityFibre in 2019 and is responsible for directing and managing the company’s day to day business wholesale and carrier commercial divisions and shaping its channel partner go-to-market strategy. He has more than two decades of experience working in partner-facing roles and senior management positions across the IT and comms channel. “I’ve worked in both large carriers and mid-sized resellers, which I feel gives me a full 360-degree view of the market and a better understanding of the challenges the channel faces.” he said.