INTERVIEW Daniel Alvarez - Glide Group
“For resellers, the lack of FTTP or even FTTC for these business customers is a wider
issue than first thought.” Daniel Alvarez, Head of Wholesale - Glide Group
Fibre First
Daniel Alvarez, Head of Wholesale at Glide Group, says that resellers need not be shut out of sales
opportunities where there is no immediate access to fibre connectivity and explains how his company can help
IT managers today are facing
on-going challenges with
connectivity as the growing
number of business process
applications being deployed
from the cloud compete
amongst each other for the
necessary bandwidth required
to deliver user expectations.
Against that background,
user expectations in a
competitive world are rising.
Even the best applications
become next to useless if they
are negatively impacted by poor
access to the cloud, leaving
the under pressure IT Team
reghting with dierent parts
of the business for prioritisation
for their own applications.
When it comes to
connectivity today the hard
truth businesses have to face
is that unless they can aord
expensive leased lines to all
of their oces the only show
in town has rapidly become
having bre-to-the-premises
(FTTP).
at is easier said than done
of course but one company
providing channel bre
solutions is Glide Group where
Head of Wholesale Daniel
Alvarez is helping resellers
open up business opportunities
across the UK.
“Companies that need bre
bandwidth now but can’t
geographically get access have
three choices; struggle along
with ADLS, pay up for leased
lines or move. However, Glide
can help in a number of ways.
Firstly, we have an agreement
with Openreach to blow our
own bre through existing
ducts and secondly, we are
installing bre ready green
cabinets at strategic business
focussed locations.
Daniel Alvarez, Head of Wholesale at Glide Group
e rate at which we are
installing these cabinets is
accelerating from its present
20 per month up to an interim
target of 100 cabinet builds per
month and we have focussed
their locations at sites that will
have maximum impact for our
resellers and their customers.
Entrances to business and
industrial parks is a great
example; where the resident
companies are more than likely
to be ‘screaming out’ for high
speed connectivity and highly
likely to have been ignored by
bre providers focussing on
residential areas.
For resellers, the lack of
FTTP or even FTTC for
these business customers is a
wider issue than rst thought.
is is about providing
their customers with all the
applications that are dependent
upon robust, fast and coste
ective connectivity.
So, we are talking about
upgrading all those legacy PBX
systems for hosted or cloudbased
telephony for a start.
en there is the opportunity
to help those businesses
join in with the customer
rst strategies that UCaaS
will enable and all the SaaS
applications that support their
business processes.
For resellers, our placing of
bre ready cabinets opens up
such a business opportunity
that they will be able to exploit
for years to come. What’s more
our bre services are not only
all synchronous, from 100/100
Mbps all the way to 1Gbps, but
also all provided on Gigabit
bearers and all aggressively
priced.
Of course, there will be
customers that want leased
lines and here we can provide
on-net service from our own
bre network.”
Glide has been actively
promoting its channel service
and leveraging its assets for a
year now and Alvarez says that
already he has some 270 active
channel partners.
“To support these services,
we have built a team of account
managers to help resellers
and have a team to provide
provisioning and service
support as well as user portal
in place.”
Looking Ahead
Alvarez says, “To compete
eectively in the marketplace
UK businesses need to have
access to markets via eective
connectivity. Connectivity that
enables business agility and
faster and faster responsiveness
to customer demand and
rising expectation. Without
these attributes it will become
increasingly dicult for
organisations to compete
let alone hope to gain any
competitive advantage.
Underpinning this business
quest for advantage must be
eective communications and
today that is being driven by
fast, bre-based connectivity.
Current connectivity
suppliers cannot keep up with
demand and the government
will hopefully make it easier
to supply by easing the
wayleaves needed to supply
which is why we are ramping
up our Fibre enabled cabinet
build program to enable our
resellers to maximise their sales
opportunities.”
40 | Comms Business Magazine | March 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.commsbusiness.co.uk