CityFibre is having initial success with a new process designed to make fiber easier for customers, which bodes well for the entire UK fiber market.
UK altnet is using a system known as permit to work (PtW) to help it reduce the need for rights of way when connecting homes and buildings to its network. The right-of-way or legal agreement between the network operator and the land or property owner adds a layer of legal complexity and therefore extra time to the network rollout.
Under this system, the end user placing the order signs the PtW form - preferably at the time of ordering, prior to provisioning or at the time of survey - which sidesteps the requirement for the order to go through the full right-of-way process.
CityFibre has been using PtW since July and has already benefited from it. The company says it has seen a 60 percent reduction in average cycle times for CAT 3 and CAT 4. It did not share actual figures for these cycle times, but it is clear that this is a considerable reduction.
"The new PtW process is a game changer. It means a lot to our partners and I can't stress it enough," said Andrew Wilson, director of wholesale channel sales at CityFibre.
"By adopting this process, partners can reduce the time between placing an order and invoicing. We encourage every partner to adopt it and see the benefits firsthand," Wilson says.
Although CityFibre is a wholesaler, any move to pave the way for increased fiber uptake will naturally have a ripple effect, especially in an increasingly competitive market for networks, at least in some regions.
While CityFibre is struggling to compete with giants in the fiber market such as Openreach and Virgin Media O2, it also faces stiff competition at the other end of the scale from a growing number of smaller fiber manufacturers that typically target specific markets.
This competitive landscape is starting to show up in market data. According to the latest statistics from Point Topic, FTTP networks passed through 41 percent of U.K. premises (or nearly 13 million premises) at the end of October, up from 38 percent at the end of August. The analyst firm noted that 925,000 premises had three separate fiber ISPs available on the same day, and up to 1.7 million had at least two.
The U.K. ranks fourth in Europe in terms of growth in the number of homes using fiber, according to FTTH Council Europe, although the agency's data lags somewhat behind Point Topic's; the U.K.'s 80 percent year-over-year growth rate refers to the 12 months ending September 2021. However, the U.K.'s absorption rate for the same period remains weak at 6.3 percent. Even on a percentage of housing adoption basis, the U.K. could only manage to achieve a 24% utilization rate.
That said, the data is relatively stale in this fast-changing market, so there is no doubt that progress has been made since then. Indeed, BT's first half figures released earlier this month showed Openreach's FTTP footprint at 8.8 million premises at the end of September 2022, with a customer base of around 2.4 million, or 27%.
That looks much healthier and helps to explain why CityFibre is keen to connect customers faster with its own initiatives.
