AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS – Outstanding contributions to the acceleration of FTTH in Europe were rewarded at the FTTH Conference in Amsterdam, with Orange Spain and Dana Tobak, chief executive officer of Hyperoptic taking away prizes. In addition, Greg Mesch, chief executive officer at CityFibre picked up the inaugural Charles Kao Award.
UK communications regulator, Ofcom has proposed to make BT and KCOM the UK’s broadband universal service providers, following submissions of interest from eight companies. Ofcom is also consulting on the obligations that should apply to them in delivering the universal service.
UK gigabit broadband provider, Hyperoptic has completed a debt raise of £250million from eight international banks to extend its full fibre optic network to 50 towns and cities across the country by 2019.
UK communications regulator, Ofcom has published a set of measures that aim to increase investment in full fibre broadband networks and lower the upfront building costs. The draft has been submitted to the European Commission for comment, and a final statement is due to be published in March 2018.
Hyperoptic has carried out a trial of fast home broadband - touching 10Gb/s - at East Village, the site of the London 2012 Athletes’ Village. The company was able to demonstrate speeds it says are some 276 times faster than the average speed a UK consumer receives today, to a UK home, using an existing service provider network, rather than a new, dedicated line.
LONDON, UK -- Dana Tobak, CEO of Hyperoptic, the UK’s largest residential gigabit broadband provider, has been awarded a CBE for her services to the broadband industry.
A CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) is awarded for outstanding work in an individual’s respective field.
Dana Tobak is a renowned broadband entrepreneur. In 2005 she co-founded Be Unlimited, which spearheaded the move to ADSL 2+ and provided a record-breaking service of 24Mbps. It acted as a market catalyst for an industry-wide uplift in broadband speeds and was quickly acquired by O2.
Britain has a reputation as a backwater when it comes to fibre-optic broadband connections that reach directly into consumer’s homes. Currently, only two per cent of households in the country have access to full fibre connections. But that looks set to change. This summer, some £500 million of equity and new debt have been invested in alternative network providers in the UK.
Fibre-based service provider Hyperoptic has secured an additional £100 million in funding to accelerate the deployment of gigabit broadband networks to UK consumers.
The cash injection comes from a consortium of four tier-one European banks: BNP Paribas, ING, RBS and Dutch investment bank NIBC. LionTree Advisors acted as Hyperoptic’s financial advisor.
The recent Covid-19 pandemic has changed many areas of our daily life, from going to a place of work, how we spend our holidays, to eating out and socialising with friends and family. For fibre engineers, it has arguably had a much greater impact.
In 2020, video calls have become ubiquitous thanks to Covid-19, revealing many people’s ‘lousy home broadband’, according to Geoff Bennett, director, solutions and technology, at Infinera.
It’s reasonable to say that the biggest disruptive influence this year has been the global pandemic that still currently has a grip on our lives.
PIA has proven its value in a project to build a carrier-independent dark fibre route between Bristol and South Wales in the UK. Mark Weller explains
Koji Okamoto underlines the importance of rebooting test processes for the ‘new normal’
Geoff Bennett evaluates how 50 years of innovation in optical communications has more recently helped to bring light from the shadow of Covid-19
Guillaume Baral outlines some of the significant benefits of adopting a more agile, modular approach to product development for fibre networks
There is a massive commercial opportunity that fibre network providers are leaving in the ground, says Stuart Large
Mattias Fridström looks at the role of software and collaboration in maximising optical networks in the future
