Nic Fildes

There was once a time when the words “fixed line” turned investors cold — as the extraordinary growth of wireless telecoms and mobile data made cabling seem antiquated. Yet, in the age of full-fibre broadband, those tables have turned.  Investors are backing a new generation of smaller, alternative cabled networks — dubbed “alt-nets” — forcing larger incumbents to increase their investment in broadband.

Vodafone has stepped up its push into the UK broadband market after striking new deals with BT’s Openreach and challenger network CityFibre that hand the group the largest ultrafast broadband footprint in the country. The deals mean Vodafone will be able to offer the high-speed broadband product to 8 million homes by spring 2022 at steep discounts as it looks to grow its share of the market. The UK company is Europe’s largest broadband provider, with more than 25 million customers after acquiring cable networks in markets including Germany and Spain.

BAI Communications' £1 billion project to enable fiber broadband for Tube passengers and aboveground London businesses signals the coming of age of alternative networks, or "alt-nets," who are spending huge amounts of money to compete in the increasingly crowded UK market. About 50 such companies, backed by funds promising billions of pounds, have burst onto the scene in recent years pledging to take the fight to Openreach, the networking division of incumbent BT, as well as Virgin Media’s cable network. Ranging from those targeting customers in underserved rural areas to others seeking to

AT&T unveiled plans to spin out and merge WarnerMedia with Discovery. The company's failed media deals destroyed more than $50 billion in shareholder value. The telecoms sector has long been fascinated with Hollywood as it has railed against the notion that the industry is little more than a collection of “dumb pipes” that act as conduits for value created by other companies. Yet telecoms-media convergence often comes at great cost and companies including AT&T and Verizon have embraced the notion that focusing on the pipes may not be so dumb after all.

Britain’s telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, has paved the way for a massive investment in full-fibre broadband networks by the industry in a move that is also likely to result in higher prices to fund the upgrade. BT will more than quadruple the size of its full-fibre network to 20 million homes by the end of the decade after Ofcom unveiled a long-term plan designed to stimulate a rapid upgrade to the nation’s broadband infrastructure.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s promise to deliver nationwide “turbocharged” broadband by 2025 will be missed because of a catalogue of government failures, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded. The public accounts committee criticised the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for failing to make any “meaningful progress” in delivering policies or legal changes to achieve a rapid rollout of gigabit broadband. As a result, thousands of homes and businesses, particularly in rural areas, could be left with slow broadband for many years, MPs warned.

The Covid-19 lockdowns were expected to push the resilience of broadband and mobile networks to the limit. With millions of people suddenly working from home, it was widely expected that telecoms companies would struggle to keep everyone connected, particularly in countries where full-fibre broadband levels are low and 5G upgrades remain a distant prospect. Yet networks mostly held firm as minor outages and service difficulties such as jerky Zoom calls proved surmountable for most workers, children and furloughed staff stuck at home.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s election promise to connect the entire country to cutting-edge broadband speeds by 2025 has been dubbed “ludicrously unrealistic” after the parliament’s spending watchdog warned that rural internet users risk being left behind by the slow pace of progress. The comments from Meg Hillier, chair of the public accounts committee, followed a National Audit Office report that said the 2025 target was “challenging” and warned that those rural areas risk being further left behind.

The village hall in Bowerchalke is an unlikely setting for a mobile technology revolution. Yet local residents, surrounded by crocheted goods and local jams, have spent three years forging a mobile phone network to bridge their own digital divide. The experimental Ch4lke Mobile, which runs over just five masts, can connect homes to a network capable of delivering broadband-like speeds, in an area that had been left behind by the digital revolution.

The United Kingdom government is drawing up plans to force a full phase out of Huawei from Britain’s 5G networks within three years. Government officials want to ensure that the UK’s telecoms networks — including 5G mobile phone infrastructure — do not contain equipment from the Chinese company beyond 2023 because they believe this could compromise national security. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Jan granted the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker a limited role in supplying kit for the UK’s 5G networks, while capping Huawei’s market share to 35 percent.