Technology Reseller v33

continued... technologyreseller.co.uk 29 Business Basics: CityFibre and centre of our strategy. TR: Where does Entanet, a CityFibre company fit into your go-to-market strategy? AW: I have three routes to market: carrier and national – the big scale national players; a regional team that works with partners to roll out business locally; and then a Business Partners team – the result of our Entanet acquisition – offering on and off-net services. So, we do also sell other suppliers’ services, such as BT Wholesale, Virgin, Sky and TalkTalk Business etc. (our off-net services). While our network is in build mode it makes sense to help partners win business in areas we currently don’t have on- net coverage, enabling them to deliver everything through us rather than having to use multiple suppliers. you be coming to our city, not the other way around. We are the white knights in that sense. TR: What are resellers looking for and how does CityFibre differ from the competition. Is it just geographic availability or are there service elements as well? AW: There are three things: geographic availability – are we available in areas where customers need connectivity?; the commercials – does our cost base give partners a differentiator?; and massive investment in systems and IT architecture to ensure that as we continue to scale our partners get an automated experience, so that it is easy for them to quote, order and track sales. That is a big mantra – it doesn’t come overnight, but making sure we are easy to do business with is front – residents and businesses. CityFibre doesn’t just cherry pick certain parts of the city, which others have done in the past, but floods the whole city with full fibre. (Ed – CityFibre has an existing Metro network in around 30 towns and cities in the UK today, offering full fibre ethernet services for partners to sell to businesses. At the same time, it is rolling out a 1Gbps Fibre to the Premise network to an additional 36 towns and cities, as well as existing areas.) TR: That must be more expensive than cherry-picking. AW: You’re right, if you only look at one city in insolation. But if you blend the whole business case together, it makes sense to do it all. From our CEO Greg Mesch down, CityFibre has a culture of genuinely wanting to make a difference, and to live by that belief system you need to commit in full. Greg has always maintained that he wants to make sure we are not just infilling but are delivering full fibre to everything from the macrocell site all the way to the carrier partners. TR: Once you have built your infrastructure, how do you make money from it? AW: It’s a very well timed game; we are monetising the network even before it is built. We do big PSN (Public Services Network) public sector framework agreements, where we work with local authorities and councils to make it happen commercially for both parties. We know there is demand from a public sector perspective, so we work closely with most of the PSN contracts in the UK and are successful at it. We are a channel-only business and off the back of that we work with key strategic partners nationally – big ISPs like TalkTalk and Vodafone – to deliver both consumer and business connections. We also have a local programme. When we know which cities we are going to be in we go to the local partner community and say ‘How do you want to grow your business with your customer base using full fibre’. It’s a really nice message because it enables those small to medium-sized IT and telecoms resellers to get on the front foot. We are not live in Derby yet, but when we are, we will know who to onboard. The fibre infrastructure in the UK is grossly under-developed and partners and consumers know that, so, if anything, it is a case of partners saying to us when will