CREATING SMARTER SOLUTIONS TOGETHER

Melbye – your fibre specialist wholesaler

Looking for a reliable supplier of end-to-end fibre solutions?

Melbye’s got you covered!

No company should stand alone when creating smart and sustainable solutions for tomorrow, and neither should they compromise on quality and reliability. Therefore we believe in partnering with the best international manufacturers and offering our high expertise, so that we can create smart relationships that benefit everyone.

At Melbye, not only will we offer smarter and more innovative solutions for our customers, but we will strive to actively contribute to the benefit of society, people and the environment.

Through strong relationships with our partners, we can ensure that you are always up-to-date with the latest industry trends and innovations.

Melbyes history spans all the way back to 1907 and we have become a leading supplier of infrastructure network solutions in Scandinavia. Now we have brought our nordic mindset to the UK – offering one of the widest ranges of top-quality fibre products on the market.

We look for partners who share our values of quality, innovation and reliability, and who are committed to sustainability and ethical practices.

If you are looking for the same – then we are looking for you!

Contact us by scanning the QR code, or visit: www.melbyefiber.com involve piloting new technology, delivering new methodologies or exploring different operational models. Other times, it is about approaching suppliers with a problem they could not solve internally.

Mike elaborates, “One example is when we approached Altnets with a couple of different product ranges that we were unable to continue to source, but needed to improve and upgrade. It wasn’t necessarily in its catalogue before we spoke to Altnets, but by working together we were able to come up with new designs, new technologies and to develop a new product range. This allowed us to deploy something that is somewhat unique to our network and the way that we're working, but we believe will be beneficial to the wider alt-net community in the long run.”

“Melbye is another recent addition to our supply chain, as a fibre specialist wholesaler based in

Scandinavia. We have been using them to support our growth in our build area, with the supply of ducting.

“They have been very quick to react to challenges within our supply chain, and we have been working closely with them in a number of critical product ranges.

“They have only been in the UK market for 4 years so have made great progress and we are excited to continue to work with them over the next stage of our company growth.” ranges to market. We recently sent our technology team to its manufacturing facility to discuss exactly what we need and where we need it. This helps to shape a road map of development, and they work with us on a lot of our new products that are coming in.

Here Mike also lauds Community Fibre’s relationship with HellermannTyton.

Manufacturing quality equipment is a primary concern, but distribution is also important.

“HellermannTyton is able to store products for us, ship them to us communications market and so their expertise is invaluable. They're often as much a partner or advisor as a supplier. Our technology team work closely with them, take problems to them and they solve the problem for us.”

Sustainability

“We don't want to just be building fastest, we also want to be very green and take care of our environment – not when we need them but also deliver them to any number of our subcontractors,” adds Mike.

“Community Fibre work with about 20 different subcontractors in and around London. HellermannTyton has the flexibility and logistical capability to deliver to who we need, when we need and it is hugely beneficial. They've also got a stellar history in the technology industry within the only in the areas we provide broadband but also the places we are influencing within our supply chain,” says Mike.

“When we buy technology, from the equipment in customers’ homes to the plastic ducting that goes underground, these components are not built in London, they're manufactured around the world. As such our community is not just our

London-based boroughs where we work, our community is global.

“We work with our supply chain to drive a sustainability agenda and that's throughout everything operationally and our supply chain. We are trying to promote sustainable sourcing, reduce our carbon footprint, work with suppliers to reduce theirs, develop environmentally friendly technologies, push for a reduction in our single-use plastic and transition from using virgin material to using recycled materials.”

Quality

“In order for us to provide stable, fast broadband we need quality materials,” says Mike. “One of the focuses for my team is to make sure that we aren't just going in and trying to buy the cheapest and then caring about the quality later. We're in this for the long run. So we buy high-quality products, we make sure that we're achieving the standards that we need to achieve – often exceeding them in the process.

“We cannot provide a customer 1,000 Mbps internet without having extremely stable high-quality products being put into their home. The units that we are putting into customers' homes are high-end and future-ready technologies. We're constantly looking to push that boundary. We’re looking at what's the next road map along the line for the Wi-Fi whether it's Wi-Fi six-e or seven and where are we going to go from there?”

Value

“Clearly, we can't continue to sell to our customers at a very competitive price if we’re spending money where we don't need to be – so we do focus on value,” states Mike.

“We like to think that it's not just about the price, it's very much a value piece. But value has to come at competitive pricing. We regularly review tenders on product ranges, partly because of our growth. Often, whatever we said we were going to buy last year, we're buying double. We expect to be able to drive a more competitive price as we have become a bigger player in the market, but also just making sure that we're really keeping an eye on our costs.

“But there's no point in spending money on something that the customer doesn't really care about and isn't interested in. If pushing that tech boundary isn't what they're after, if what they need is a competitive price broadband, we pivot. We like to keep our supply chain lean and buy in what we need. We don’t want to have a lot of waste. It's good for keeping our environmental concerns in check, but also keeping our costs down.”

Community provision

“For us, community stretches all the way from our end users all the way up to our supply chain,” says Mike. “We're a London-based ISP and we recognise the importance of our local communities. But we work closely with our supply chain to ensure they're also respecting the communities they work in, engaging with them and ensuring we're supporting them where possible too.

“For a lot of our subcontractors that are building and installing in London, they undertake their own community focus work. So they might be going and supporting local food banks, they might be working within schools or providing equipment and we really help to make that happen and provide those local products and services and enable our supply chain to also focus on their community.”

Outreach

Community might be one of the five elements of supply chain strategy at Community Fibre but the concept of service extends far beyond this.

Affordability is key. The company offers a range of packages at different price points to ensure their services are affordable for all Londoners, regardless of their economic circumstances. Two of the mantras at Community Fibre are ‘Bridging the digital divide’ and ‘Fairer broadband for all.’

The concept of serving the community is not limited to their broadband packages – it extends far beyond internet provision.

“We provide free 1,000 Mbps broadband connections to community centres in any areas where we're operating. We've connected almost 500 community spaces now in London,” Mike says.

“We offer digital skills training through our digital ambassadors. We train digital ambassadors in the local communities who can then move around in their districts and support anybody – for example vulnerable users, schools or classes – with digital skills training. That might include internet security, using emails, online banking, how to be aware of avoiding scams and so on. I think that's a vitally important part of what we're doing. We're not just there to sell broadband to people, we're also there to support communities and vulnerable people in them.”

Principal Ambitions

So, what is next for Community Fibre in the coming years?

Mike elaborates, “We want to be the biggest fibre to the home provider in London, maintain our best-in-class customer service and continue to support the communities that we work in and improve the lives of the people that we work with.

“Within this, we're working on improving our supply chain technology. From investing in new tools and systems to give us visibility of our supply chain, to better demand planning and warehouse management systems – we’re hoping that we can use technology to make our supply chain more agile and our inventory leaner. We also want to optimise our logistics to keep our carbon footprint and costs down and enhance our customer experience.”

To learn more about Community Fibre, visit their website communityfibre.co.uk