When ‘Project Gigabit’ was announced in 2020, the idea of rolling out Full Fibre to the entire UK seemed an insurmountable challenge.
Of course, Openreach had and still has, a significant part to play in reaching that milestone. But smaller Alt-Nets, building regional Full Fibre networks, have played just as important (and a somewhat unsung) part in ensuring that rural areas and market towns don’t fall by the wayside in favour of larger, more densely populated areas.
In accomplishing this, hundreds of Alt-Nets are facing the challenge of efficiently scaling their regional networks. Those efforts are all the more impressive when the vast time, resources and strategic planning and investment required to build – as well as the challenges of continuing to operate a profitable and reliable regional network – are considered as a whole, let alone scaling it into a business with national reach!
As part of TalkTalk Group’s mission to democratise high-speed broadband access for all, TalkTalk Wholesale Services is making it as easy as possible for Alt-Nets to achieve their goals, offering them the tools and support to make the process as cost-efficient, simple and fast, as possible.
So, what do regional infrastructure builders require to reach the Final Mile fast?
National coverage
Having spent tens of millions of pounds on futureproofing its infrastructure, TalkTalk Wholesale Services offers access to more than 900 exchanges throughout Great Britain, covering corners of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Full East/West diversity out of all key Data Exchanges also ensures Alt-Nets have a reliable Backhaul connection to the public internet. As well as opening up
new strategic opportunities, a more reliable network also enables Alt-Nets to improve uptime stats and offer business-grade SLAs to further boost credibility and customer confidence.
Streamlined deployment
Getting regional networks connected to national infrastructure and the possibility of waiting months, if not years in some cases, creates massive operational risk. That’s not the case when partnering with TalkTalk Wholesale Services, where 10 Gb Backhaul services can go live in as little as one month. Then, once the service is live, additional circuits can be brought online in a matter of days.
While Openreach’s EAD services have previously been a popular option for Alt-Nets to gain quick access, the recent increase in surcharges for FTTP aggregation, attached to those connections hinders Alt-Net growth, especially in rural areas.
Instead, by ensuring TalkTalk Wholesale Services’ Backhaul solutions are cost-effective and Alt-Nets are only shouldered with minimal CapEx and OpEx burdens, Alt-Nets can focus on engaging prospective customers, investing their limited resources in sales and marketing to find revenue faster, instead of operational costs that offer no tangible benefits.
Scalability
While Ethernet may be more cost-effective in smaller, residential areas, for example, as bandwidth demand continues to increase and new technologies are introduced, modern fibre standards such as XGS-PON, leveraging multiple wavelengths within the same Optical Distribution Network, will enable far higher levels of scalability.
That’s why TalkTalk Wholesale Services offers 10 and 100 Gb options across both Ethernet and Optical routes. This enables regional builders to meet the increasing demands for top-tier broadband services across both residential and commercial applications, such as the uptake in cloud services, high-resolution streaming services, gaming, as well as everything else businesses and consumers will come to expect their internet connections to deliver in the future.
Plus, there’s no paperwork or ticketing required to scale these services. For example, TalkTalk Wholesale Services’ award-winning 1Portal makes the process incredibly straightforward, with only a few clicks required to boost the bandwidth on a 100Gb bearer.
Alt-Nets need to be able to scale as customer bases grow and leverage flexible Backhaul services to design a network topology that provides value for money while improving service performance.
That’s exactly what TalkTalk Wholesale Services is on a mission to do – by offering the national reach, technical expertise, support and seamless solutions that ensure local connectivity providers can focus on growth and customer service, over operational costs and complexity.
