INTERVIEW
Realising Full-Fibre
Moving to full-fi bre has been the mantra of CityFibre since its inception. Never shy to highlight the behaviour of a
certain dominant incumbent, here Mark Collins, Strategy & Public Affairs Director, at CityFibre spoke to Comms
Business
Comms Business Magazine
(CBM): What is the latest on
the CityFibre infrastructure
build out? Where are you giving
Openreach is run for its money?
Mark Collins (MC): In short, it’s
going great! In 2017 we signed a
strategic FTTP build partnership
with Vodafone to serve gigabit
speed services to up to ve
million premises by 2025. 2018
was then about mobilising our
construction machine, but it was
a huge year for us in other ways
too. First, we were taken private
by two of the most prestigious
infrastructure funds in the
world. en, o the back of this,
we committed to a £2.5 billion
rollout to reach at least 20% of
the UK, and have already raised
£1.12 billion of nancing to help
us accelerate construction.
Twelve cities – representing
the rst one million premises –
have already been announced.
Build is well underway in
the rst seven of these and
Vodafone’s Gigafast services are
already live in the rst four. Now
it’s all about scaling for success
in these cities and those yet to be
announced.
CBM: There is a lot to be done
before we get everyone to full
fi bre, what kind of challenges is
CityFibre facing in realising this
vision?
MC: Ironically one of the biggest
challenges is the poor suitability
of Openreach’s Duct and
Pole Access (DPA); a product
that’s supposed to speed up
and decrease the cost at which
competitors to Openreach
can deploy networks. As the
largest user of it right now, we’re
working with Openreach and
Ofcom to try to make it t for
purpose, but it simply hasn’t
been designed for those who are
building citywide deployments at
scale. As a tool it’s fragmented,
restrictive and ine cient and it’s
currently unusable throughout
Scotland. And the fact that
Openreach is not required to
reserve access for its own bre
rollouts through the same
product (and jump through the
same hoops as us), also makes it
non-equivalent.
Another challenge impacting
the speed with which the UK
stands to bene t from full bre
is duplicative network build.
Building two wholesale networks
in the same area, at least before
nationwide coverage has been
achieved, is an ine cient use
of private investment. It will
deplete the overall pool of private
investment, in ict doubledisruption
on overbuilt areas and
result in other areas missing out
entirely. Already, a number of
local authorities are voicing their
concern on exactly this.
An emerging issue facing
all network builders is the
availability of construction
workers from overseas. e
risk of rising demand for such
labour, alongside the UK’s
current political uncertainty,
still needs to be quanti ed.
And if you then add needless
duplicative network build to
this you exacerbate the issue in
relation to local workforces too.
Both issues combine to threaten
the pace at which our industry
can pull together to meet the
Government’s target of 100%
full bre coverage.
A nal challenge is to
ensure that as plans develop
to retire the copper network,
altnet-based bre services are
recognised as a viable destination
for end customers, alongside
Openreach’s. It’s also vital that
such a programme considers the
investment business cases of all
players equally.
CBM: What do 5G services
mean for CityFibre?
For us, 5G is a powerful use
case for full bre coverage across
whole cities and
supporting it
is very much
an evolution
of what we
already do. 5G
will underpin
decades worth
of innovation
to come,
supporting
new mobiledependent
technologies
and
applications
across all
sectors
of the economy. We see it
as complementary though:
signi cantly enhancing the
mobile experience when people
are out and about, while a
fantastic FTTP experience awaits
them in homes and o ces when
they return – each backing up
the other to keep our nation
connected.
CBM: How invested is CityFibre
in Huawei equipment and
what will the removal of that
equipment mean for future roll
out of services?
ere’s no Huawei equipment
in our network so the associated
security risks and supply chain
concerns aren’t an issue for us.
It’s clearly a di erent story for
other operators who’ve baked
Huawei deep in their mobile
services, FTTC and FTTH
architectures though.
Mark Collins, Strategy & Public
Affairs Director, at CityFibre
Zen. More human than you think.
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