CallFlow - Whitstable

Just having my usual poke around locally and noticed loads of CallFlow activity all over Whitstable... guessing it must be FTTP they are installing.

Looks like they are trying to get a jump on Openreach who also have this area scheduled to start at some point for Fibre Villages.

Competition cant be a bad thing

In reply to a post by kjwkjw:

Just having my usual poke around locally and noticed loads of CallFlow activity all over Whitstable... guessing it must be FTTP they are installing.

Looks like they are trying to get a jump on Openreach who also have this area scheduled to start at some point for Fibre Villages.

Competition cant be a bad thing

If you haven’t got your own “indie” full fibre broadband company, with thirty billion pounds of private equity or sovereign wealth infra fund money sloshing about in your bank account, then your an abject failure and an absolute nobody in the world of UK comms.

One a penny, two a penny…🤣

I didn't realise CallFlow and Trooli are one and the same... Strangely Trooli make no mention of Whistable in their plans.

My post was tongue in cheek - but I am firmly of the view that we have been witnessing the last few years a small scale historic repeat of the the millennium dot com bubble and especially the global comms bubble that resulted in massive infrastructure overbuild - the results of which were very many bankrupt comms companies (and suppliers). On the plus side we all enjoy to this day the benefits of relatively cheap and abundant national and international fibre links.

In a similar way, I would be amazed if in 5-10 years there still are as many “indie” FTTP companies as we have in this market today. I have t counted recently but there must be two dozen or more. They are just takeover targets for the big three of four.

If there wasn’t as much cheap and abundant cash looking for “infrastructure” long term investment, we would be in another place completely.

I think you are right in that respect and we will see a lot of consolidation over the coming years through mergers and acquisitions as the funders look for exit plans voluntarily or otherwise.

Exciting times none the less for the lucky ones who get these builds pop up in their areas, myself included. We are in the advanced stages of an OR Fibre Village build and now Cityfibre have also announced us.

Competition cant be a bad thing

Do you know, I’m not entirely sure.

Surely it would have been better for consumers to have one company fitting and maintaining FTTP everywhere, then have the various CP’s offer their services over that network.

Once you have one, maybe two FTTP suppliers on your local patch .. that’ll be that, limited choice of products/service providers ... I expect in many cases, after one company has installed, others won’t bother.

I know of a block of flats round here where the only service you can have is SeeTheLight .... there’s still an Openreach copper DP in the basement which serves the shops ... so when punters ring any of the ‘usual suspects’ they can place an order .. but they cannot be provided service. People want choices. Many of these small altnets don’t offer that, and I’d be concerned if I were one of their punters about them ramping up prices Willy Nilly because of their ‘captive’ customer base.

I suspect the horse has already bolted. A short drive last week saw three different adjacent towns each with a different small independent FTTP supplier ramming their network in the ground like there was no tomorrow. City Fibre in Bracknell, Zoom in Ascot, and Gigaclear in Crowthorne.
I’ll accept that in some of those locations there is also Openreach FTTP available, but not yet widely so, and not in direct competition with each other.

A lot of the 'small independent' firms are actually owned by much bigger firms with much deeper pockets than BT.

In all honesty I think the market is overheated and overcapitalised. Many of the small firms don’t have the geographic reach or indeed the ambition to offer a substantive alternative to OR. They are simply building TakeMeOverNets.

There is one notable exception which could realistically challenge OR on geographic scale and numbers. The rest will be subsumed at some point.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In all honesty I think the market is overheated and overcapitalised. Many of the small firms don’t have the geographic reach or indeed the ambition to offer a substantive alternative to OR. They are simply building TakeMeOverNets.

There is one notable exception which could realistically challenge OR on geographic scale and numbers. The rest will be subsumed at some point.

Exactly what is going to happen - It's like Silicon Valley tech firms who get bought out by the likes of Google / Apple before they pose a threat or have just a piece of tech / roll out of something they have't gotten round to doing yet.

Openreach is probably themselves getting sold off to a VC / Hedge Fund in a few years anyway.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Surely it would have been better for consumers to have one company fitting and maintaining FTTP everywhere, then have the various CP’s offer their services over that network.

There is an argument that the funds being ploughed into competing fibre networks (in London near me OR is likely to be overbuilt once in many areas and twice in some, not counting Virgin) would be better spent on a national infrastructure that could have greater reach due to the removal of overbuild. The model of an infrastructure operator selling services to CPs has many flaws and frustrations but I accept that it fundamentally works.

However, in the imperfect world we live in Openreach have been pushed towards faster FTTP rollout by competition. They, like any commercially operated business delayed investment until the business case warranted it, and competition warranted it before demand based on actual customer needs did.

Competition currently allows home users in altnet areas to access better, frequently symmetrical upload speeds. In time competition may push Openreach to improve their offering there, but the forces resisting it are strong and more mainstream demand (or customer loss to altnets) is needed before anything will change.

Openreach are safer than most from takeover, their pension fund and liabilities is a dead weight.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

There is one notable exception which could realistically challenge OR on geographic scale and numbers. The rest will be subsumed at some point.

To me this is just a repeat of what happened with cable networks.

The US shows it is bad to have a single operator running the network and ISP services without any choice. If you dislike the product you have to move town to change ISP. (Maybe 5G will compete in time).

much deeper pockets thatn BT that invested close to 5 - 6bn since 2011 - really


problem is they want a return on their investment and not having to wait 20 years for it

In reply to a post by ft247:

There is an argument that the funds being ploughed into competing fibre networks (in London near me OR is likely to be overbuilt once in many areas and twice in some, not counting Virgin) would be better spent on a national infrastructure that could have greater reach due to the removal of overbuild.

The trouble is, in areas covered only by Openreach, there is no business case for them to invest. Existing customers may have a poor service, but they have no other choice. If Openreach roll out FTTP then every customer gained on FTTP will be a customer lost on copper; there will be a few who pay a premium for ultrafast services, but most won't, so there is very little revenue gain.

Hence it needs the likes of Virgin and Cityfibre to give them a kick into action. Rolling out FTTP to regain lost customers back is gained revenue.

You're not going to get national coverage from those though. Even Cityfibre's long-term ambition is for only 30% coverage. They will cherry-pick the 30% of the UK which is cheapest to build to, and they will compete by undercutting: regulated pricing means that Openreach can't sell below the price set by Ofcom, and this is explicitly so that other operators have an incentive to overbuild.

Sure, the government could pay to build a national network. But what then? Will they be left holding and running a national network? Or will they gift it to Openreach, which is basically a gift to BT shareholders? Or will they lease it to Openreach, which is really no different to Openreach borrowing the capital and investing themselves? Or break it into franchises, like the great success of national railway?

At least Openreach *are* building out fibre now, much faster than any other operator. Cityfibre recently announce 500K properties passed in total; Openreach build that much every 3 months.

Government. National network……???!!!! Ahhh the horror, the horror. Shudder no. Definitely 100% no sir.

So many failed examples of that. In telecoms cast over the big pond at how badly the Aussies (recently .. if you count 2009 to 2020!) fudged that lot up with NBN - it became a decade long political football. And the end result is basically homogeneous [censored].

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Government. National network……???!!!! Ahhh the horror, the horror. Shudder no. Definitely 100% no sir.

I agree!

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The trouble is, in areas covered only by Openreach, there is no business case for them to invest. Existing customers may have a poor service, but they have no other choice. If Openreach roll out FTTP then every customer gained on FTTP will be a customer lost on copper; there will be a few who pay a premium for ultrafast services, but most won't, so there is very little revenue gain.

Hence it needs the likes of Virgin and Cityfibre to give them a kick into action. Rolling out FTTP to regain lost customers back is gained revenue.

This is very much the problem. My area is heavily covered by VM, and Community Fibre are almost on sale - so is relatively far up the list for FTTP, the build is about half complete. Competition works well for urban areas.

There are no easy answers to sorting rural areas. A public national network is theoretically the right answer but Australia have not had great results. The UK railways, or US communications, should tell you all you need to know about a franchise model.

I'd argue that the current strategy works for urban areas - I would tweak it a bit and force Openreach (and every other operator) to make up their mind quickly on what areas are 'commercially unviable'. There would be an obligation to deploy service in areas deemed viable relatively quickly.

The government could then fund a public utility service in those areas, and others would be forbidden from deploying their own infrastructure for mass market services in those areas for a number of years. Reseller access could be provided but the state would retain ownership of the plant, so if demand went up they would recoup some investment.

I don't run the government so that's just a wild idea. And yes, the pace of Openreach build is impressive. Arguably it needs to get faster, but that is easier said than done.