The rise of the AltNets

As the UK forges ahead with Gigabit roll-out to underserved and rural areas of the UK and reduce the digital divide between the underserved rural areas of the country and metro regions, the rise of the alternative network providers (AltNets) has provided the telecoms industry with a timely boost. The UK Government’s plan to provide over 15million homes with gigabit capable broadband by the end of 2025 has provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for entrepreneurial telecoms start-ups to build networks that run in parallel and compliment traditional service provider networks.

So how can Nomios help telecoms start-ups and already established service providers take advantage and succeed in this exciting market segment?

This example deployment architecture has been segregated broadly in line with the “OSI 7 LayerModel” with a particular focus on:

• Layer 3: Network Layer = IP / MPLS. (Routers, firewalls etc)
• Layer 2: Transport Layer = Ethernet / xDSL. (Ethernet switches and xDSL-style broadband)
• Layer 1: Physical Layer. This is the raw stream of “bits & bytes”. (Fibre and some Optical)

This example also divides the ISP network into three broad areas of coverage:

• Core & Edge: This is the core network, primarily responsible for interconnecting regions (metro, towns, cities), and providing access to the internet via transit & peering points.
• Access: Whilst this area may differ in make-up between AltNets, this is broadly the means of connecting individual residential or business subscribers onto the core of the ISP network, and the required supporting services. This may be based on technology such as xPON, 5G, P2P Ethernet...
• Datacentre: It likely that the ISPs will need to offer some services to their customers (such as account/billing portals, and other ISP services such as DNS). Whilst some of these may reside in Cloud, an on-premise secure and scalable datacentre architecture maybe required.

Despite their success, warnings have come from within the industry that for a number of start-up AltNets, securing Government funding and private investors is likely to be the easy bit, getting fibre in the ground, lighting up the network and signing up customers will for many, be more challenging.

Lack of skills, planning, industry knowledge, physical resource and shortages of hardware are good examples of common pitfalls. Nomios works with AltNets of all sizes and at every stage of their maturity to overcome challenges and deliver on their customer, or investor promise. At a high level we simplify the ALT Net market in three tiers, each with its own set of challenges and requirements.

Tier 1

Established ISP level organisations that have taken advantage of the Government led initiative. Typically they will have extensive fibre networks with an established and growing subscriber base (500K+). A common challenge here is post-scale, and the opportunity to outsource services to re-investment and better utilise skilled human resource. Brand value is high as a priority together with user experience customer value. In our experience SIEM, EDR, XDR, Automation and Managed Security Services are very much in the minds of these organisations.

Tier 2

AltNets that have already deployed fibre in the ground and are experiencing accelerated growth. How to scale can be a challenge for Network Security and Infrastructure teams and how to align to fast paced strategic expansion plans. A common challenge is whether to 'acquire hardware aligned to forecasted growth', or 'acquire according to actual growth'. Our innovative and flexible commercial arrangements together with specialist consultancy and project management services have supported the growth plans and market success of AltNets in this tier.

Tier 3

Arguably the most active end of the ALT Net market. These are well-funded ambitious start-up organisations with a mix of requirements from basic process and technical support to full network design, deployment and support services. For many of the AltNets in this tier, time, skills and resource privileges are thin on the ground and being supported by and experienced cyber security and network infrastructure specialist is essential to their early life success. Start-up AltNets also have the incredible opportunity to work with our automation experts to build in automation processes from the start.