Posted on
More from News
With Boris Johnson settling into 10 Downing Street, the broadband sector is considering how a recent aim made by the new prime minister to bring full fibre connectivity to every home and business in the UK in just six years could be achieved.
Mr Johnson set out this goal in a recent column for the Daily Telegraph while running for leadership of the Conservative Party, calling for steps to be taken to achieve this target by 2025 at the latest.
The piece was light on detail, but the level of ambition was given a cautious welcome by many in the industry, and now one new full fibre-focused ISP has laid out some key steps for how to turn it into a reality.
New alternative provider Zzoomm noted that to meet this goal, it will require four million properties to be connected to fibre-to-the-premises every year from 2020 to 2025 - or 16,000 homes and businesses every working day.
"As a society we will need to decide that this is worth doing, and to get the long-term benefits of full fibre gigabit speed broadband, it is worth tolerating the short-term inconvenience and disruption of building this essential infrastructure into every home and business," the company stated.
Zzoomm stated that current planning and highways laws should be suspended in order to facilitate the deployment of the necessary cabling as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
Next, the ISP stated that private property laws should also be relaxed to ensure deployers can gain access to residential and business premises to deliver fibre broadband.
On the labour side, it recommended easing immigration restrictions and making it simpler for overseas construction workers to obtain the right visas, in order to ensure there is a skilled workforce available to complete the work. This may be especially important in a post-Brexit economy.
Finally, Zzoomm said there should be changes to broadband advertising rules to help consumers easily identify full fibre services, as opposed to partial fibre-to-the-cabinet offerings. These are often currently advertised as 'fibre', even though many in the industry have said this is misleading.
"Changes to our regulations and bylaws, along with greater collaboration, will enable operators to deliver high-quality fibre infrastructure rapidly and encourage consumers to switch to full fibre broadband services, the ISP concluded.
