Oxby (pictured above, left) has emphasised Community Fibre has not “switched” to wholesale, with the company always intending on working with wholesalers once its network had reached scale and the wholesale market for full fibre had matured.
The comments were made in the latest edition of Richard Tang’s interview series with stakeholders from across the telecoms industry. You can watch the interview in full here.
Tang (pictured above, right) asked Oxby, “Your business model is interesting in that you’ve been both the network builder and ISP for most of your existence. More recently, you’ve said you want to do wholesale as well [and have] said you want to partner with ISPs like Zen. I know that you partner with TalkTalk already as your first ISP partner. Why the switch to wholesale?”
Oxby responded, “It’s not a switch. And our lenders will tell you this because, when they’ve seen the business cases, wholesale has always been a core part from years ago so it’s not a switch. The reality is the wholesale market for full fibre is really immature and, had I relied on waiting for wholesale customers, I wouldn't have very many customers. And that makes no sense.”
Community Fibre also had to ensure its network was ready for wholesalers, with Oxby explaining that “wholesalers aren’t interested in small networks” as they are “big businesses themselves, and can't deal with endless little bits of complexity”. Oxby said of wholesalers: “They want big networks. They want density. They want to know that things work, and that they’re predictable and reliable.”
Oxby added that the full fibre market could mirror the mobile market, with network operators having their own brand as well as multiple other brands through wholesale partnerships covering different segments of the market.
He explained, “At the end of day, we’re a network business and a full network is a good network, so we want the network to be full. There’s no point building a network to have it be 70 per cent empty because you've only got 30 per cent retail penetration. It’s a perfectly logical choice.”