Protect or control your business – what will you choose?

If you knew you had the equivalent of a large town’s worth of opportunity to go after every week, what would you do? Our Broadband Portfolio Manager Andrew Sayle and Head of Trading & Partner Experience Mark Howarth discuss the existing opportunities brought about by the switch off and asks of channel businesses if they are going to be at the forefront, leading, or catching up desperately, once it happens.

The full fibre rollout

Zen has been involved in the rollout of full fibre from Openreach’s early trials back in 2009 and in parallel unbundling its own exchanges, with approximately 85% of its customers now on net – this means getting their connectivity over Zen’s own network. This gives Zen the ability to manage costs, but also to manage service and reputation – the foundations the business is built on. It is this innate obsession with network quality that has built the company’s reputation for reliability, winning it Which? recommended provider status time and time again.

Since announcing the stop sell, there has been a number of steps that Openreach has put in place. They have accelerated the pace of the full fibre rollout with approximately 65,000 new premises –equivalent to the size of a large town – equivalent to a large town – enabled every week. They have also launched the wonderfully named SOGEA (single order generic ethernet access), a replacement product for FTTC that can be used in locations where full fibre is not yet available.

In conjunction with this rollout, Openreach is stopping the sale of WLR. There are large parts of the country in which this has already happened, with the remaining to be enforced by September. This means there are already millions of addresses where either full fibre or SOGEA are now the only connectivity products available to buy/sell.

Beating inertia

Despite the progress being made on switch off plans, and there being millions of premises ready for a regrade, or switch over to the newer technologies, the supporting industry remains static when it comes to the pace of change. The switch off is a problem that has been created by our industry. And it is one that poses massive challenges for businesses that are all under immense pressure from the current inflationary environment. The extra headache of connectivity regrades is simply not a priority for them.

As an industry we need to take collective responsibility. We need to help businesses understand the opportunity the switch off represents – they can harness technology to execute tasks that simply weren’t possible before. They may only be small incremental improvements, but without the industry building awareness around the benefits, how are these incremental improvements going to happen? We must outline where the opportunity within the change is for businesses, so they no longer see it as a burden, but as something they can easily navigate with the help of the experts that know it inside out – the channel.

The data

Openreach has provided plenty of data to work through to identify what customers are coming down the line in terms of the full fibre rollout and the stop sell. But as channel partners, you have a business to run, you don’t have time to be working through this data and finding the best route forward. That is why Zen provides tools, availability checkers and white label marketing and communications material to help navigate the project.

Zen has more full fibre and SOGEA in its partner base than any other products and that is not by accident. Our partners are making the strategic decision to order the new products for their customer base as soon as they are available, rather than just doing what they’ve always done or waiting for someone else to take action.  

Building a loyal customer base

As soon as full fibre is available customers will want it. And if you’re not selling it to them, someone else will. The beauty of the product is its reliability – once on full fibre, there’s less appetite for change. That is why partners must win those customers now because they won’t have reason to move around after.

Many in the industry are asking if the 2025 date will even go ahead. Zen is asking – are you willing to bet your business on it not going ahead? The choice is yours – be at the forefront, leading or wait to see what happens and risk having to desperately catch up.

You can watch our recent Switch Off webinar with Comms Business here to find out more and you can visit out Great British Switch Off page to find other useful information and to get in touch with our experts.