Insights from the recent Fibre Forecast panel discussion
Where things get stuck
The UK’s full fibre rollout has moved fast, with coverage now approaching 80 per cent. The build itself has been a major achievement. But building the network is the easy part. The real challenge is turning that infrastructure into revenue at scale. This is where many altnets are now feeling the pressure.
At Fibre Café we see this every day. The networks that move quickest are the ones with solid operational basics in place. Wholesale only works when the experience is simple and consistent for partners. That is what Fibre Café was built to fix.
This was a clear theme during the recent Fibre Forecast panel. Our MD Donal Hanrahan summed it up well: “Altnets have either been totally focused on building, or their methodology for converting customers is limited by brand or back-office capability.”
Finding the balance
The networks making progress are the ones taking a blended approach. Retail gives them presence and control in their build areas. Wholesale gives them reach by accessing customers they would never win directly. They do not need to compete directly with large established national brands. They can benefit from that reach while keeping retail activity where it makes sense.
Joseph Giordano from PXC reinforced this point: “It is a very quick route to get usage on their network and that is essential to avoid devaluing the tremendous products and services available.”
The scale challenge is clear. Around 90 per cent of the broadband market is served by large established brands, yet the supply chain contains more than 100 providers. Most networks do not have the scale to serve these brands directly. What they need is a way to plug into that scale without building huge commercial, operational or technology teams.
The integration challenge
This is where things usually break down. Every network has its own APIs, processes, service catalogues and ways of handling orders. For service providers working across multiple networks, this becomes an operational mess that is expensive to maintain and impossible to scale.
This is exactly what Fibre Café was built to solve. Service providers integrate once with us and get standardised access to multiple networks. Networks integrate once and become easy for service providers to work with, without one-off relationships or bespoke integrations.
Giordano explained it well: “We cannot have multiple versions of the same thing bending us out of shape. If it is not easy for a wholesale partner to consume the product, altnets will have challenges down the line.”
The networks that are simplest to work with naturally receive the highest volume of business. Fibre Café creates that environment by providing a single framework for availability checking, ordering and provisioning. Service providers do not need to know which network sits behind an order. The experience is the same every time.
As Donal put it: “Our job is to remove friction so that organisations can move from premises passed to revenue as quickly as possible.”
The path forward
The UK has built world-class fibre infrastructure. The networks that turn it into revenue fastest will be the ones that make wholesale simple, consistent and sustainable. Fibre Café exists to be that operational layer. We remove integration complexity for networks and give service providers a single, scalable way to work across multiple altnets.
The infrastructure is here. Now the operational layer needs to match it.
About Fibre Café
Fibre Café connects service providers to multiple wholesale networks through a single standard interface. By removing integration complexity and enabling a true “connect once, connect to many” model, we help networks accelerate wholesale growth and help service providers scale without operational overhead.