Investors
Fast2Fibre won a €2.3m grant for phase 2 Innovation Programme in November 2016. Fast2Fibre was 1 of only 4 UK companies to win this level of funding in November 2016.
Overview
Fast2Fibre offers a unique, patented solution for extracting telecoms and power cables, offering network operators, or their civil contractors, many benefits. Our aim is to provide a highly scalable solution that enables the world’s network operators to increase the pace of upgrading their fibre optic networks. This is in line with targets set by governments, telecom regulators, telecoms operators and online businesses, as well as consumers globally for ultra-fast Internet access.
Our disruptive, comprehensive solution enables a faster copper cable upgrade to fibre, with reduced excavation, reduced costs and reduced impacts on surrounding communities and the environment. The processes have been proven to deliver these benefits across multiple cable types in North America, Europe and Asia. We are currently experiencing a large increase in demand from many network operators who are now ready to upgrade to cable in locations that are especially challenging to work in, such as urban centres and difficult operating environments.
Our Vision
We will work with network operators around the world to significantly reduce the cost and time required for fibre optic upgrade in urban centres and difficult operating environments. Our advantages are especially compelling in high-value areas where fibre upgrade is costly and complicated, without requiring major capital expenditure for network operators and contractors – or us.
We are currently raising capital to maximise the significant business opportunities by expanding both our commercial and operational teams in major markets. This will enable us to service the existing and increasing demand for our process.
Our Market
Our customer market is both national and international telecoms companies, or their civil contractors, upgrading an existing copper network to fibre all the way to customer premises. The world wants faster broadband.
The EU has set a target that all European households should have access to superfast (>100Mbps) broadband, upgradeable to 1Gbps by 2025, which gives a potential of 60% growth in Fibre To The Premise installations over the next 5 years.
Business and consumer requirements for ultrafast broadband continue to accelerate (graph below). COVID-19 has rapidly increased bandwidth usage due to home working and schooling. In turn, this has highlighted the capacity failings in many national networks, particularly the poor performance of the copper elements, showing that the widely used DSL technology is now obsolete and upgrading to fibre is essential. As a result, many online businesses have had to downgrade the quality of streaming services. A surprisingly small percentage of the UK has ultra-fast broadband at present.
The result is that there is a renewed vigour to upgrade the network to fibre.
Analysis has shown that to upgrade the network in Europe to full fibre and accommodate the 5G rollout requires approximately 50 million new fibre connections to be installed. Many of the routes requiring upgrade have no other option than to dig, which is 80% of the upgrade cost – step in Fast2fibre.
Our Strategy
Our strategy is to scale up our business to support network operators. We can move very quickly as we are not a civil works provider. Instead we train operators or their contractor teams to use our patented process, backed up by support from our engineering team.
Our Patented Process
We have two proprietary, patented technologies and a third, secured by an exclusive contract agreement with the license holder. Further IP is being developed. In addition, a valuable database and ‘know how’ of removing different types of cable are continually being built – over 400+ have been tested to date.
Why Now
The Market
- The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital inclusion – households and businesses have become even more dependent on broadband connectivity.
- Businesses are reviewing the potential to reduce their office estate and property overheads having seen that employees can work effectively from home.
- The need and use of data has and will continue to increase, which will impact on employment, productivity and economic growth.
Our Target Customers
- We offer a scalable process that saves operators time, money and administration.
- The more pilot schemes we deliver, the more network operators see the full potential benefits of our process.
- We enable our customers to maintain and increase their market share, while satisfying consumer demand cost effectively.
Our Investors
- We are finalising commercial agreements around the world.
- We have conducted a number of successful projects in real-world conditions using our unique patented solutions.
- We are looking to grow our sales and operations team to meet demand, enabling our customers to scale their fibre upgrade locally as well as internationally.
If you are interested in talking to us about any investment opportunities, please complete the contact form below.