In part two of our series exploring the evolution of Fibre Café, Donal Hanrahan, Strategic Imperatives’ Director of Strategy, shares his opinions on the challenges and opportunities for UK service providers and the vital role Fibre Café has to play in supporting their growth.
What are the Fibre Café’s current priorities? Are there clear challenges to address and opportunities to capitalise on?
Our number one priority remains solving the most pressing challenges that service providers face, namely the long-standing pain points that have for too long restricted network expansion and integration with wholesale networks.
One of the most significant challenges for service providers is the complexity associated with integration, because each network provider uses different technologies, APIs, and processes. Through Fibre Café, we enable a new reality of ‘Connect Once, Connect to Many’, meaning that service providers need only connect to Fibre Café once in order to unlock access to 18+ million premises across multiple UK wholesale networks. This standardised approach using uniform APIs and processes across different network providers is a game-changer for the industry because it is removing the technical barriers to empower service providers to expand their coverage.
Service providers have historically had to deal with high development costs when onboarding new providers, because of the substantial resource required, while maintaining multiple integrations drains resources and increases costs too. We’ve listened to this and eliminated the expense of developing and maintaining multiple integrations, thanks to our standardised approach to connecting service providers with wholesale networks. This allows our customers to redirect valuable development resources to more strategic initiatives.
Slow time-to-market and the ability to serve new markets have also been long-standing barriers to growth for service providers, caused mainly by lengthy onboarding timescales that put them at a competitive disadvantage in a fast-moving market. By leveraging existing integrations, Fibre Café reduces onboarding timescales by months at a time, unlocking growth opportunities for service providers who want to stay ahead, not play catch up.
What does all of this mean? For us, it’s about empowering service providers with a launchpad for growth, through a platform that helps them expand their network reach at an unprecedented rate, while gaining cost and resource efficiencies to drive better business outcomes.
Where is value moving in the UK service provider market? How is the Fibre Café helping service providers position themselves to capitalise on this?
Service providers are battling for market share by rolling out initiatives like bundled services, promotions and competitive pricing. We are seeing smaller, more agile providers gaining significant ground by offering faster speeds and better customer service, challenging market incumbents.
Competition is only a good thing for the market. Right now, Fibre Café gives these service providers access to over 18 million premises across the UK via wholesale networks as they look to increase market share. Our focus is on helping service providers expand their reach and provide their customers with access to the best possible networks so they can offer an exceptional service. Facilitating as many connections as possible for service providers remains our ultimate objective.
As Nick Helman, Managing Director of Redcentric’s Connectivity and Communications, said recently, Fibre Café is a strategic enabler for the business, allowing them to “procure and deliver circuits faster and provide complete visibility by enabling customers to access the latest and most up to date information throughout the process.”
This is something that’s replicated across all the service providers that are joining the Fibre Café and leveraging the platform’s “Connect Once, Connect To Many” approach to gain access to the UK’s growing wholesale ecosystem.
Donal’s insights were recently published in an exclusive interview with Fibre Provider. To view the full Q&A, visit: https://fibreprovider.net/news/keeping-competition-hot.
Want to discover how Fibre Café can streamline and accelerate UK wholesale telecoms connectivity for your business? Get in touch with us today.
