June 2023 saw CTC Union celebrate thirty successful years in business.

A key technology partner of Fibre Technologies, CTC Union was founded in 1993 and develops and manufactures Fibre Optic Equipment including industrial switches, media converters and a wide range of other Fibre Optic products.

CTC Union’s software development system follows the cybersecurity IEC62443 regulations for the design of Industrial & Telecom networking products. With their own in-house R&D and factory CTC Union develops and manufactures high-quality products in Taiwan.

CTC Union’s goal is to provide reliable, temperature resistant and rugged designs for mission critical systems used in harsh environments. With more than 30 years of experience in design of Telecom products, CTC Union is highly motivated to deliver various access switches and FTTP CPE products.

Fibre Technologies has been a CTC Union partner for over ten years and are experts in the product range and applications, selling CTC Union products into a number of industries.

In recognition of our long standing partnership CTC Union kindly sent us a gift in celebration of their thirty year anniversary which is now proudly displayed in our office.

We thank our partners at CTC Union for supporting our relationship and we wish them congratulations on their successful thirty years in business. We look forward to continuing our relationship

As the UK rollout of full fibre (FTTP) broadband gathers pace, BT are increasingly turning their attention to the challenge of how to extract all of that valuable copper leftover from their legacy phone network. Initial trials have already taken place, and they now expect to extract over 200 tonnes of copper cable this year.

The complete extraction of BT and Openreach’s legacy cables and kit will be a slow process because some parts of the UK are still likely to need them for many years longer, while consumers also have to be given time to migrate. Nevertheless, Openreach’s new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network already covers 10.27 million premises, and they aim to reach 25 million by December 2026. But they recently hinted that this might grow up to 30 million by 2030 (here), which would only leave a tiny portion of premises stuck on ancient copper, or even aluminium, lines.

The process of moving end-users away from copper and on to fibre optic infrastructure is already underway and that will only expand over the coming years, albeit very gradually. BT recently stated that it remained “confident” of being able to “recover” an estimated 200,000 tonnes of copper from their old legacy network through the 2030s.

Read the full story here.

A new survey of over 6,000 adults in the UK, which was conducted by consumer charity Citizen’s Advice, claims to have uncovered that “up to” 1 million broadband customers “disconnected” their broadband ISP connection over the past year because the cost-of-living crisis left them unable to afford it.

The survey itself included 1,215 respondents known to be in receipt of Universal Credit (state benefits). Overall, some 6% of people claiming Universal Credit said they had stopped spending on broadband altogether, which compares to just 1% of respondents not on Universal Credit.

However, what’s not clear is where these people went (e.g. did they fall back to mobile data, stay disconnected or borrow a neighbour’s service?), although we assume that they must have found some sort of solution because the aforementioned survey was “conducted online“. Sadly, the survey didn’t dig into this, and so we’re missing some vital context.

Read the Full Story Here

If you already have, or are thinking of implementing, a managed service using Openreach’s Optical Spectrum Access then Fibre Technologies and our partner ADVA can help you get the most out of it.

OSA Filter Connect is an enhancement to the fully managed base product offering that enables you to access the underlying dark fibre, via spare ports on the filter, with your own DWDM equipment. This effectively gives you your own virtual dark fibre with all the key benefits that dark fibre offers – like the freedom to control and increase bandwidth usage at no extra cost – without compromising on service and maintenance levels.

 Openreach will maintain a minimum of one managed wavelength for you, although you can choose to have multiple managed wavelengths on the service from them. All the other filter ports are available for you to deploy your own equipment over, with each channel able to support up to 100G.

In this way Filter Connect provides you the best of both worlds; top-class service from Openreach who will look after the fibre and managed wavelengths with 24/7 monitoring together with the flexibility for you to develop and manage your own services over the spare channels on the optical filter.

Since the OSA service is built using the ADVA product set, FTL and ADVA are the perfect consultancy and product partners to assist you in maximising the ROI from your OSA service.

If you would like more details, please email sales@fibre.co.uk

Alternative broadband ISP Trooli, which is rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of England and originally aspired to cover 1 million premises by the end of 2024 (so far they claim to have covered 275k), has finally launched a cheaper entry-level 150Mbps tier.

Just to recap. Trooli’s fibre build has slowed to a crawl in recent months and the operator has since become somewhat of an acquisition target for various investors, including several rival operators (example). The provider needs more investment to continue their deployment, which is something that they’ve so far been unable to secure. Questions also surround how much take-up their network has been able to generate.

In the past we’ve mentioned that one of the provider’s problems is that their cheapest tier was a 300Mbps plan for £35 per month, which is better than fine for most people. But it may not be enough to attract consumers with only limited or basic requirements and who may be paying less for a slower FTTC tier on another ISP.

Read the full story here.

The Scottish Government has published a new Public Review (PR) consultation for Scotland, which reveals that some 447,170 premises might need state aid help under the UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme in order to access 1Gbps speeds (rising to 1,281,434 if including ‘Under Review‘ premises).

The project, which is targeted at upgrading areas in the final 20% of the UK (5-6 million premises) where commercial investment models tend to fail, seeks to ensure that a minimum of 85%+ of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable broadband ISP connection by the end of 2025, before reaching “nationwide” coverage (realistically c.99%) by the end of 2030 (here and here).

NOTE: Commercial builds – mostly in urban areas – have largely already pushed gigabit coverage to around 70% of Scotland and rising (mix of FTTP and Hybrid Fibre Coax).

However, the first step – before procurements can begin and contracts be awarded to suppliers – is to identify precisely which areas are not expected to benefit from gigabit speeds under existing commercial builds, which covers related plans for the next 3 years. This is known as an Open Market Review (OMR). Only once you have the answer to that, can you identify where public funding will be needed to help address market failure.

Read the full story here

Network operator Neos Networks has today been named as the preferred bidder for Network Rail’s Project Reach, which among other things could see them invest in the design and build of a new trackside fibre optic communications network. This could also help to improve UK gigabit broadband and 5G mobile coverage.

Just to recap. We reported last year that both Neos Networks (bidding alongside Cellnex) and Virgin Media (bidding alongside Nokia and Jacobs) had been approved to bid on the £1bn (estimated) auction of 16,000 km (10,000 miles) worth of Network Rail’s trackside cable network.

The privatisation plan, which among other things would see the winning bidder upgrade the trackside infrastructure and build 250 new mobile masts to help tackle 5G “notspots” for commuters, was first revealed by Network Rail in 2021 (here). The sale itself reflects their older trackside cable network, much of which this still runs off legacy copper lines and is in need of an upgrade (this carries all sorts of transport, CCTV, signalling and other data).

Read the full story here.