FROM THE INDUSTRY
Every time you turn the news on something more awful and unpredictable has happened; how does THE FTTH COUNCIL EUROPE handle geopolitical uncertainty? How does it affect your mandate? I like to focus on the positives. Let’s be clear; the media landscape does not necessarily reflect a balanced view. In a worldwide context, EMEA is a very attractive place to live, work and invest in. Europe shouldn’t be considered as a sort of blob. European territories vary immensely, it’s hard to generalise. The roll out is increasing productivity across the continent, allowing access to the digital world the digital economy and enhancing well-being, connecting more isolated locations in order to access education, health and others. Agreed, but in terms of your mandate - ? More positives. The council is advocating for the lowering of barriers; a membership organisation can engage at a European and governmental level. This enables sharing of legacy, passive infrastructures, establishing in-building wiring regimes. The EU has recently passed the Gigabit Infrastructure Act, (which ensures faster, cheaper, and simpler rollout of Gigabit networks installation, addressing the main hurdles like expensive and complex procedures for network deployment. The act is also instrumental to achieve
What can the FTTH Council do to improve matters? There are all sorts of reasons for the lack of success in this area. Firstly data. The FTTH Council is a membership organisation and our members come from predominantly vendors and operators. We provide data: the market panorama and the work that is done by the Market Intelligence Committee to provide numbers on coverage, take-up, penetration in each company, in each country. Those numbers help because they provide a data point for advocacy within local countries and at a European level. Secondly - sustainability. We have a platform for members to report their carbon footprint, in line with new regulations. This places requirements on their suppliers to be able to tell operators about the materials going into their networks. Often the suppliers are small to medium businesses who may not have the resources to be on top of every European regulation, so the council brought out a new platform to support members in that. Finally, our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee ensure talent is harnessed for the success of the industry. We have the Deployment and Operations committee who look at best practice for deploying networks. So, there’s an absolute myriad of support that’s coming from the council.
the 2030 Digital Decade target on connectivity: ensuring cross-EU access to fast Gigabit connectivity and fast mobile data by 2030). We are very hopeful that all of what is going to happen as that Act takes effect. We’re trying to make the fibre industry an attractive place to work. We recently did a video campaign about women in fibre, which is high quality collateral for schools and individual member companies to help bring people in. And closer to home with the new Labour government? The FTTH Council Europe objective is 100% fast fibre broadband across Europe which aligns with governments in Europe, because it contributes to the health of the economy, it contributes to the health of communities. The UK is no different in that regard, it’s a healthy market, there is great opportunity for growth. As I said, 4.7 million homes passed last year. We would expect the same again. You can clearly see, Melissa, I’m a glass half full person. There are always reasons to be cheerful. The UK government has been very clear about is this desire for more homes built, which is more homes connected with fibre. Hopefully the duct infrastructure to those homes is included in that home build so that the fibre operators already have the infrastructure to connect those homes to fibre. That means that roads don’t have to be dug up again.
78
Volume 46 No.4 DECEMBER 2024
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker