Unlocking a new digital infrastructure future for London

Hi, I'm Steve Tongish. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at IQGeo and I'm really pleased to have in our stand today at Connected Britain two guests from Boldyn. The first is Mark Francisco and Ben Belloni. You gentlemen did a really interesting presentation yesterday about a deployment, a fibre deployment in London. Could you just recap that presentation from yesterday for us? Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having us here and thanks for giving us the opportunity to speak about the project that we're really excited about, the changes that we're making in London. Yesterday we talked about the new digital infrastructure for London in partnership with Transport for London. Bolden Networks is investing £1 billion of private equity into building a new digital backbone for London through the partnership with Transport for London. In that, there's going to be a brand new fibre that's going to be running the tube lines all throughout through 137 stations bringing mobile connectivity in the underground that is so much needed and much wanted. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Right, everybody wants that. When you're in the underground, you see everyone on their phones, don't you? Exactly, exactly. Everyone's on their phones. They don't even notice when it's there, but they notice when it's not. And then with that, we can break out from the underground and it actually expands at the street level. In partnership again with Transport for London, we have access to 1800 kilometres of subsurface ducting, traffic management ducting, that gives us a wider reach of that fiber network into London boroughs. And you're putting that in street furniture all over the city. That's right. Yeah. If we look at what we're trying to achieve here, we're ultimately trying to achieve a connected London. And there's three real key outcomes that we're looking to achieve here. The first one is driving economic growth, boosting productivity across the capital for visitors, residents, commuters. The second one is really breaking down barriers and providing access to the world. So, you know, ensuring that residents, businesses, commuters have access to high capacity, high speed fiber and connectivity. And the last one really is around enhancing and improving public safety. So, you know, when we're deploying fiber and we're providing a new distance structure, actually what we're trying to do is provide safety beacons through small cells and enhance connectivity to CCTV cameras to really improve public safety. Yeah. That's amazing. It's the digital equity, safety, connectivity, all of those things that you're bringing to the city. Okay. We're here in the IQGeo stand. IQGeo did play a part in this. So, what was the role of IQGeo in this project? It's really instrumental. If we look at IQGeo as a platform, it's really been the vessel to enable our fiber and asset inventory management. We've been able to track our deployment all the way through from survey, design, build, all the way through into operations. And what that's enabled us to do is really build reliably, efficiently, and actually at pace, providing kind of a single source of truth. And absolutely from a small cell perspective, we've been able to really provide a single kind of sole mythology across bold and our build partners to seamlessly transition through that design, build, and into operations. So, it's giving you that core network model of all of the fiber infrastructure. Yeah. And that's a really good point because we really look at this from a kind of a macro level, looking at it all of the where is the fiber running throughout the city? And then we can get all the way and drill down to how are these connected, spliced, patched, and tracking all of that as that single source of truth is really helpful from a design perspective, but all the way to the operations. And from an operations perspective, in order to provide a world-class and best-in-class service to our customers, being able to have all of that mapped out, you know, a very across the IQGeo platform, that kind of underpins rapid fault identification through kind of like the network tracing tool and stuff. So, we're really able to, you know, if there is a fault in that, you know, very, very quickly and going to deploy a team to fix it. So, it really is a game changer. Outstanding. So, what you've touched on this a little bit already, Ben, but what are the benefits that this project is bringing to TFL and also just to people in London? You know, the kind of the tube piece alone, when you look at the underground, obviously, that's it, you know, we're addressing one of the largest not-spots in the globe, right? It's never been done before. So, we're bringing a brand new digital infrastructure to London from an underground perspective, which is a game changer. People can take Teams calls, phone calls, text messages, scroll on Instagram, whatever they need to do, they can now do that on the tube. But from an above-ground perspective, when you look at what we're deploying in terms of small cells, they really are kind of addressing the key not-spots and improving or addressing, capacity and coverage issues that we've got in the capital. And not only does that enhance or improve public safety, but ultimately it boosts productivity and ensures that commuters, residents, visitors have got access to digital services whenever they require it. And without that network model, that would be very difficult to achieve. Yeah, absolutely. So, final question. Is there one thing about this project that you're most proud of? One thing is a hard one to just have to know that. If you had to pick one. Creating a new digital backbone for London is probably the one thing. It's transformative. As we start putting in all this high-capacity fiber, this infrastructure, I know there's many things that I'm just talking about right now, but it is transformative. And we talked about those three points, right? About economic growth, about providing access that's fair and just for all, as well as safety. I know I'm knocking off a lot of points. I am. But about how transformative it is. I think that's really why, the proudest thing I have to say about what we're doing here in London. And to Ben's, and to your point earlier, about people recognize when it's gone, when it's not there. And we become so dependent on it, don't we? It's kind of a necessity now, you know, connectivity. It's a fundamental digital right now, isn't it? Access to the best. Yeah. For me, it's kind of the piece that we're doing with the London boroughs, the safety piece and the breaking down barriers and providing access to all that. That's something that, personally, I'm really, really proud of, of deploying and adding to us. I think there was another exciting event that happened at this year's show, and that's that you received an award for this project. Yeah, we're really excited to have won the Access Innovation Award for hard to reach places here at Connected Britain. It really highlights the work, the hard work that we've been putting in to try to create that digital equity across London itself. Yeah. And if you look at kind of the underground as a whole, you know, that's a huge kind of piece of innovation in addressing kind of a key connectivity issue. But actually, across the London boroughs, we're providing key connectivity and really bridging the digital divide across the London boroughs. Well, getting access to the London, the underground is a huge task and very difficult to reach, isn't it? And you've had to develop new technology for that as well. That's right. Yes, absolutely. But I think it's also important to note that as we reach out with the London underground, we bring fiber to neighbourhoods that are underserved as well. So even though that it might be above ground, there are hard to reach places within London itself that we're trying to improve that will provide the digital connectivity. Well, congratulations on the award as well. Thanks very much for your time and thank you for explaining the project. Thank you very much.