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ICEE supports expansion of Zzoomm Full Fibre broadband network

by | May 18, 2021

Zzoomm plc is a fast growing Full Fibre broadband service provider (ISP), serving homes and businesses in Henley-on-Thames, building a brand new network in Hereford, and planning to serve many more towns and cities across the United Kingdom. A key part of implementing the network infrastructure has been outsourced to ICEE Managed Services, namely designing, manufacturing, fitting-out, installing and maintaining bespoke ‘active’ equipment enclosures

Founded in December 2018 by Matthew Hare OBE, an ISP industry veteran, Zzoomm Full Fibre broadband differentiates itself from big-name competitors through agility and swift action, backed by the best possible broadband technology. It offers great value-for-money services that reflect the fast-changing demands of its customers. Pressure imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns is an example. For many people, having to work from home places big strains on two-way data exchange based on copper or a combination of copper and fibre optic cable such as fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) networks. This is amplified when a whole family – and many web-enabled devices – have to share a copper-based connection, not to mention the whole street. With its pure full fibre infrastructure delivered straight into the property, Zzoomm claim their most popular home service (400Mbps) is six times faster than other ISPs in Henley-on-Thames that depend on copper, or combinations. Thanks to advanced investment in technology, today the company also offers other residential broadband speeds up to 2,000Mbps, or business services which can reach an amazing 10,000Mbps.

Aiming to serve one million customers by 2025 the company targets under supported market towns. Famous for its annual Henley Royal Regatta rowing festival, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, is an example. With around 12,000 inhabitants, the town was selected by Zzoomm as a launch pad for its highly competitive infrastructure and broadband products. At the completion of this rollout in November 2020, the company claims Henley now has one of the fastest broadband networks in the country. Zzoomm places great emphasis on installing high quality infrastructure, designed and implemented to last reliably for many decades and flexible enough to accommodate the latest technical innovations. This includes allowing plenty of spare capacity for future expansion.

Not only homes and businesses require advanced broadband, escalating demands created by data-hungry ‘smart city’ public services and the rapid increase in new developments such as the internet of things (IoT) mean copper is rapidly becoming a serious bottleneck to progress.

Bespoke enclosures offer a competitive edge

For a number of reasons, Zzoomm wanted a bespoke solution for its active, or tier-one level equipment cabinets, the key distribution nodes on the network. The core design had to be right because it would be the blueprint for all such cabinets going forward, to be used in every town in Zzoomm’s business plan. Although bespoke, in effect it would be the company’s standard cabinet, but with designed-in flexibility to easily change or update internal equipment, add fibre optic cables, or bolt on extensions to the enclosure. Additionally, there is a highly competitive element. When this case study was written Sven Huster was Zzoomm’s Engineering Director and has since left the company, but said at the time: “This is a very specialised market. To gain competitive edge, every operator deploys slightly different equipment into a street cabinet in a slightly different way. So there’s a lot of customisation and there are quite a few design considerations to then make the solution practical.” He added, although fibre optic broadband technology is characterised by rapid change and continual improvement, “the point here is much more that A standard or off-the-shelf enclosure would be unlikely to accommodate all this potential technology ‘churn’, nor might it provide a ready means – space, bracketry and other features – to replace, re-configure or add internal components when required. With bespoke, Zzoomm could put in place all the details necessary to facilitate future changes. Above all, Zzoomm wanted to fully outsource the whole process of enclosure design and development, manufacture and fit-out, installation, upgrading and maintenance. It wanted a reliable and well-proven partner that could meet contrasting demands – first managing the special and time-consuming process of transforming a prototype into a production asset, but soon after having the necessary resources to fully support Zzoomm as it expanded its business across the country.