FROM THE INDUSTRY
Tell me about what’s happening at Flomatik.
We are about to rebrand our business; we’re moving from the Flomatik Network Services Limited Business to Teleste Network Services Limited. The timing is right for us to do that. Flomatik was born in 2007, predominately out of design and survey work we were carrying out for VM02. Why now? Our business has augmented over the past 4 years, we are more than just design and survey. Since combining Teleste Limited and Flomatik’s operational structure in the UK, our portfolio of opportunity now includes both services and our active and passive HFC and fibre products, therefore it makes sense to now rebrand as one. Presumably also because like many others, Teleste is looking to expand beyond telecoms? Exactly that. It enables us now to start to explore beyond the traditional broadband sector: utilities, transport, et cetera, providing not only design and survey, but managed services also. The rebrand is as much concerned with your offering as your focus presumably. Traditionally Teleste was always known for its HFC brand products and Flomatik was trying to demonstrate that it was fibre, therefore it was right to kind of rebrand it differently. It grew into a design, survey and engineering capability focused on fibre under the watchful eye of the previous CEO, who established the name and grew the business well. In the last couple of years investment has dried up and therefore demand for design has shrunk; focus in the market shifted towards consumer conversation as build slowed in the altnet space.
The focus shifted towards consumer conversion and therefore build had slowed dramatically. The expectation is the UK will have gigabit connectivity by the end of this year.
In my opinion the upload and download speed is not a differentiator. You must start thinking about content. So why would someone from Virgin Media, who gets content, why would someone from Sky, who gets content, why would someone from BT, who gets some level of content, move to an ISP who just say, I can give you one gig upload, one gig download. It’s difficult to argue that. What the altnets will now have to start to focus on is how to entice people away from someone or their incumbent who’s providing content? I moved away from BT to Voneus, because all I had was fibre to the cabinet and it was poor. Every time it rained my internet would drop out. The only option I had was Voneus full fibre. Now I’ve got a stable broadband service, brilliant. But I’m starting to ask the question, so what next Voneus? What more can you give me? Because I want to spend, and if it’s right, I’ll spend more with you.
So, the industry needs to diversify.
There is this massive rush on fibre, and quite rightly so, because it’s all about building the future, because copper’s been in the ground for over a hundred plus years and therefore has a finality to it. There’s only so much you can extract from it. That said, there is still life in it, maybe five plus years of its life cycle. HFC is seeing a sunset productive capability, fibre is the sunrise capability. But what I find surprising is the slow uptake in the altnet space in some areas; they’re having to offer large discounts to entice customers to move to their service.
MARCH 2025 Volume 47 No.1
75
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