Connectivity has become a defining feature for any modern professional business, and any business looking to engage in any marketplace nowadays needs to make sure they’re investing in the fastest, most reliable systems to do so. Business Connect caught up with Andy Thompson, Managing Director of Nxcoms, specialists in next generation business communications, to find out a little more about his business and the current options available for gigabit fibre connectivity businesses:
Andy – tell us about how and why you set up Nxcoms?
“We are actually celebrating our first 5 years since starting in 2017. We held the view that the world of telecommunications was going through a massive and sudden change at this time. Everything was moving to cloud and internet options, and it was this new technology that we wished to introduce to our customers. We were keen to offer a ‘hassle-free’ service for businesses across many different sectors, helping them to adopt this technology without the need for any specific technical expertise. My background previous to this was 15 years in the IT and telecoms sectors, and during this time I could see the changes unfolding at a rapidly increasing pace. It’s an exciting industry to be in, fast moving tech and constantly improving methods offering businesses so many options. Our task is to understand the needs of those businesses and offer an ongoing partnership with them ensuring developing technology is always adopted quickly and efficiently.”
Tell us about the services Nxcoms provide?
“Essentially everything needed to connect your business with your clients, suppliers and your own team. Telephone systems and services are our core products. However, we are doing more and more connectivity now in terms of broadband and full fibre internet, leased lines, and also mobile connectivity has become very popular – this includes data connections across a mobile network as well as a physical landline. We also offer hosted cloud-based desktop and server options. If a customer wanted to create a virtual working environment we’d offer that as a service using a hosted platform.”
How would you describe your perfect client?
“The best type of client for us would be a business requiring flexibility and a need for quick, responsive support. For example, serviced offices containing multiple users and multiple tenants, or businesses moving in or moving out of a building. Call centres would definitely be on our list. Any business with connectivity issues, for example at remote sites. Construction and Security companies where traditional broadband might not be established and internet coverage is required. One of our biggest passions is to help businesses with slow or unreliable broadband to connect using different alternative methods.”
You are currently partnering with LCR Connect. Can you explain in more detail?
“LCR Connect is an initiative by Liverpool City Region and the Regional Mayor’s Office to provide gigabit capable internet access across the all the boroughs of Liverpool. The scheme offers a network of fibre-optic cables directly into businesses, providing all businesses across the region access to gigabit connectivity.”
What sort of costs and timescales are involved with the scheme?
“The work is well underway and is due to be finished by the end of 2022 and early 2023. The £30m joint venture involving Liverpool City Region consists of 212km of fibre optic cable and the first sections including Liverpool City Centre and Daresbury Science Park have now gone live. Once an area goes live, it’s simply a task of connecting a business within that area to the existing network. This vastly reduces any business installation costs within that area, and it also offers an ongoing saving in usage costs. This is where Nxcoms comes in as an approved partner for the scheme. Our job is to work with the end user businesses accessing the connectivity, and offering a value-added range of support options to ensure businesses take full advantage of the available infrastructure. We would oversee the installation, supply the equipment and provide ongoing support working in partnership with the business. Essentially the customer would come to us and we would provide a complete service from start to finish.”
Looking to the future – what are your plans as a business?
“At the moment fibre connectivity is a big growth area across the country, with full support from the government. I believe the targets are 85% coverage by 2025. This includes plans to switch off the old copper-based phone lines by 2025, which would also include traditional-based broadband services. Essentially these services would simply cease to exist and businesses would need to move to the newer full fibre products. Over the next few years we are concentrating our efforts in helping businesses adapt to the future, specifically ending their reliance on old copper-based connectivity in favour of the speed and reliability of new fibre-based gigabit connectivity. Making this change will bring instant cost savings to many businesses, as well as helping them run far more efficiently. In the case of businesses situated across the Liverpool city region, the costs for connecting to the new fibre network have already been absorbed by the region, making joining the infrastructure a simple, cost-effective and speedy process.”
Are you just looking to help businesses across the Liverpool region?
“We’re authorised partners with LCR Connect, but we’ve also got arrangements in place to help businesses across many more regions. The task of bringing gigabit fibre connectivity to businesses is a directive affecting the whole of the UK, with government support covering the entire country. Nxcoms are helping businesses in Manchester, across Lancashire, West Midlands and London, with plans for many other cities and city regions across the UK.”
Would you say it’s prudent for businesses to act now rather than leave to the last minute and risk losing services?
“As soon as the gigabit fibre infrastructure is made available, I’d advise businesses to switch straightaway. Not only will they benefit instantly from faster speeds, with a subsequent rise in business productivity, but areas like remote working can be handled more efficiently – particularly after our experiences over the last few years forcing working from home.
“There is also the reliability factor to consider too. Gigabit fibre connectivity is immensely more reliable than services accessed through copper lines. Businesses need to rely on internet and emails, and any disruption or slowing of service can have an ongoing detrimental effect on not just productivity, but employee wellbeing. There’s also account management, CRM systems, remote conference calling. Connectivity is key, and also having the right speeds to comfortably accommodate all these services is crucial. When you look at many current services provided through copper cables, the difference in speed between a Gigabit connection is vastly different. Most copper-based speeds are measured in less than 80Mb/sec, with some as poor as 10Mb/sec, whereas Gigabit speeds offer up to 1,000Mb/sec.”
We have been looking at your partnership with LCR Connect and the services provided for businesses to access a newly built gigabit fibre infrastructure. What can you offer for businesses who can’t take advantage of these networks?
“Our philosophy has been right from day one to be able to provide our customers with a solution to enable them to work on any device, anywhere at any time. Remote working has always been part of what we do, and even before the pandemic we were ensuring solutions were available for flexible, or hybrid as it has become known, working practices.”
How robust are the new gigabit fibre networks. Would they need replacing in the future in order to accommodate faster speeds and increased traffic?
“The speeds we are seeing now are gigabit and 10 gigabit, and it won’t be long until we see 100 gigabit speeds. The very nature of fibre-optic cables are that those speeds can be handled easily. There’s probably not going to be any need to upgrade any new cabling in the ground for the next hundred years or so.”
Are there different services available?
“There are two different services that can be accessed – a contended service or an uncontended service. With a contended service you pay less to get an ultra-fast and reliable access to the gigabit fibre network, but as soon as more customers start downloading or uploading a lot of information all at once, then the bandwidth is shared across them. This may not be a problem for a small business, but larger businesses, or those who need to move larger amounts of data, may experience a slowing down of services. The solution is an uncontended service, which gives businesses a guarantee that the speed they pay for is the speed they get, irrespective of how many colleagues are accessing the network, at any time, day or night. But of course, for that kind of premium service you do have to pay a little more.”
For more information on the work across Liverpool City Region with LCR Connect: nxcoms.co.uk
Find out more – contact Nxcoms: 0161 711 1100 info@nxcoms.co.uk
