The Challenge

Community Fibre is one of the fastest-growing broadband providers in the U.K. In the last few years, the company expanded from 30,000 customers to nearly 430,000. For Community Fibre’s most recent fiscal year, total revenue reached £113 million (approximately $151 million), a year-on-year increase of nearly 50%.

Operating across London, Community Fibre delivers high-quality fiber-only broadband connectivity to 1.3 million homes and over 185,000 businesses. And to ensure no one is left behind in the digital age, the company also provides free full-fiber broadband to over 700 community spaces across the city.

To support even more growth in the future, Community Fibre recently conducted a top-to-bottom technology refresh. This involved modernizing and standardizing all of the company’s core platforms, including billing, CRM, ERP and more.

This tech refresh was needed because Community Fibre’s rapid growth has also created a new challenge: ensuring consistent, secure access across a diverse workforce. This includes contractors and third-party teams, some as far away as Asia, who use both managed and unmanaged devices. 

Initially, Community Fibre tried to overcome this challenge with traditional approaches, including virtual desktops (VDI) and virtual private networks (VPNs). However, instead of fixing the problem, these added complexity, required additional infrastructure, and made it more difficult to maintain a consistent user experience. 

“You could never be 100% certain who was connecting through” recounts Chris Williams, Community Fibre’s CIO.