Our Managing Director, Cathal O’Grady, looks at how Covid-19 has increased the urgency to roll out faster broadband.
As we enter a second lockdown in England, at Complete Utilities we have implemented and adopted a COVID plan which allows us to safely continue installing, upgrading and maintaining critical infrastructure which the UK Government has classified as ‘essential’. So that since March we’ve continued to ensure nothing, not even a worldwide pandemic, will stand in the way of our customers’ water, power, gas or fibre networks and the communities they serve.
Lockdown was a gamechanger
You won’t be surprised to learn that since the start of the first national lockdown, the demand on our experience and expertise to deliver fibre networks has significantly increased. According to global change consultants McKinsey, Coronavirus advanced the ‘adoption of digital’ by as much as “a decade in days”. And following the Prime Minister’s statement on 16th March, we became a nation of home workers and home shoppers overnight. Seeking new ways to keep connected, fed, informed, entertained and fit during the pandemic.
As a result, research conducted by Ofcom shows lockdown created significant growth in daytime data consumption. Upload speeds and download speeds reduced across copper networks where most providers saw a downgrade in network latency in March. According to providers such as BT, there was a 35-60% increase in weekday broadband traffic on networks. A surge in the use of emerging video-sharing and video-calling services was especially strong, with the biggest growth seen by Zoom, the virtual meeting platform, which grew from 659,000 UK adults before March to reach 13 million adults – a rise of almost 2,000%.
The Covid-19 lockdown made the resilience of the UK’s internet infrastructure and the switch from copper to full fibre even more critical.
We’re already delivering fibre further and faster
As part of our £90m contract to deliver BDUK’s Fastershire project with Gigaclear, we are installing networks up to 30% faster than other providers and in some of the UK’s remotest locations. We can do this because we provide end to end solutions (that don’t rely on third party contractors) and because we have invested in the latest surveying, installation and reinstatement technology and techniques. Not forgetting the can-do attitude of our employees who we are so grateful for as they have continued to work through these testing times. I’m so proud of the critical role they are playing through the delivery of everything from power supplies to supermarkets, fresh drinking water to homes, and full fibre internet connections helping to educate our school children and university students and more.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them, as well as all those frontline workers who have cared for and protected our loved ones and communities since March.
We don’t take any risks
We deliver networks rapidly but never recklessly and we always take Health & Safety very seriously. Now more than ever we are taking additional steps and strictly following government guidelines to protect everyone from our office workers to our installation teams as well as the residents of the towns, villages and rural communities we’re working in. We’ll be continuing to bring faster, more dependable fibre and reliable power, water and gas networks to the nation during Lockdown 2.
Cathal O’Grady, Managing Director