In the latest episode of Programmable World, host Dan Ilett interviews David Yates and Jonny Rae.

David is an entrepreneur, investor and advisor. With over 30 years’ experience in telecoms, he is a partner at Tollejo and co-founder of Gigabit Networks – an internet service provider (ISP), delivering full-fibre broadband across the Midlands.

Jonny is a telecoms consultant, helping resellers and ISPs grow and improve their businesses.

The Fibre Revolution

The general feeling in the telecoms industry is that the UK is behind other countries in Europe and Asia with regard to full-fibre adoption. In this episode, David argues that Asia has been miles ahead for some time now – predominantly because they skipped the traditional copper infrastructure and moved straight to fibre.

Many of our networks in the UK still use copper-based broadband, and as a consequence, UK customers still suffer from slower than average speeds, and less than acceptable reliability. 

Jonny does iterate, however, that we are now in the midst of a ‘fibre revolution’ – as infrastructure providers desperately try to replace copper. The government is offering large cash-based incentives to make this happen.  

What are the setbacks?

One of the major setbacks facing ISPs right now is that customers have been sold ‘fibre broadband’ for years, and yet the majority of their network has in fact been built with copper and only a small amount of fibre. 

This has made it hard for full-fibre providers as the public are accustomed to slow speeds and don’t feel confident that ‘new fibre’ will be an improvement.

What should the focus be?

One of the crucial points that David makes is that reliability is paramount, as we saw in the pandemic.

As we become more and more dependent on broadband in the home, it will eventually be seen as a utility, just like water, gas and electricity. 

The move to full-fibre will support this reliability factor – but this has to be communicated to customers effectively and dynamically.

For the full story from David and Jonny, you can listen to the episode here.

Stay tuned to the Programmable World podcast here.