That's looks OK...so long as no one reverses their CyberTruck into it 😂

Most CityFibre FEX's are hidden away inside industrial units and occasionally a few greenfield sites.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 16-Sep-23 12:15:27)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

That's looks OK...so long as no one reverses their CyberTruck into it 😂

🤣 That would be amusing to watch.

Those greenfield sites look similar to the older cabinets at the base of the large macro cell sites, huge cabin next to a massive tower structure. Makes the new-ish streetworks units look tiny in comparison.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Hampshire's altnet has their "head end" at the back of this car park. Its not CityFibre.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/gL5WU3NsKtzBEX7D6

Every day is a school day. Who are they?

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Every day is a school day. Who are they?

Toob, growing fast - https://www.toob.co.uk/

Coverage maps shows Worthing/Brighton and Bournemouth, but here they are an ISP on the CityFibre network. The other areas are their own FTTP build.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 16-Sep-23 14:48:55)

Oh them. I'll revisit my statement about how no altnet does things that way in 12-24 months with the caveat that I'm referring to active altnets.

Thanks for the information!

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Oh them. I'll revisit my statement about how no altnet does things that way in 12-24 months with the caveat that I'm referring to active altnets.

I have colleagues on the south coast whom are live with Toob and say it works well.

Thanks for the information!

NP!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I have colleagues on the south coast whom are live with Toob and say it works well.

It's not the performance that concerns, it's the cash burn relative to premises passed. 😬

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

It's not the performance that concerns, it's the cash burn relative to premises passed. 😬

Agreed, financial viability. I read on ISPreview that toob have recently had yet more injections of cash.

If CityFibre go belly up, would VM or nexfibre acquire them, or just abandon the network and start their own? In this town we have Toob building fast and active in places, and F&W in some other places. OR FTTP only in a small new development, and VM old cable.

Anyone other than VM would be good....

Edited by jchamier (Sun 17-Sep-23 10:39:59)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

It’s still relatively early days and difficult to know what’s what and draw firm conclusions, but it’s becoming clearer who some of the winners and losers are in the great FTTP “gold rush” of the late twenty teens and early twenty twenties are.

What’s slowly killing all these companies is the monumental cost (difficulty and delays) in building your own duct network (or placing your own poles) - coupled of course now with the ever increasing cost of finance. Unbelievably low interest rate and cheap money were only ever a passing phase. Getting customers to sign up to your new network isn’t easy either - which is why so few AltNets let on what their connected customer numbers really are - they are often downright embarrassingly tiny.

CityFibre are digging their own trenches (well their cadre of subcontractors are) they also have to plan, build and run their own Fibre Exchanges (FeX) which won’t be cheap to either build or run.

Other AltNet operators that are taking the PIA approach (very few or no trenches to dig) and siting their headend gear in existing BT exchanges have none of those costs and concerns - they operate a very lean capital intensive operation. I dare say they will be the winner and the losers will have thousand of miles of ducts and microduct but an otherwise decrepit balance sheet.

Interesting times to come.

Hardly an original point, but it does feel like there really are some echos of the early/mid 90s cable TV build-out, which ended up landing the various companies in signiicant financial difficulties - difficulties which only really got resolved in the mid-noughties with the financial restructuring that resulted in the NTL & Telewest merger and the formation of Virgin Media. Obviously there are significant differences too - e.g. the economic picture in the early 90's had high interest rates

Building out infrastructure is expensive - and perhaps PIA has been the game changer.

Edited by binary (Sun 17-Sep-23 17:03:18)