Smallworld Fibre (previously Smallworld Cable, Wightcable North and OMNE) was a British telecommunications company based in

Irvine, North Ayrshire Irvine ( ; sco, Irvin,
gd, Irbhinn, IPA: Dreghorn Dreghorn is a village in North Ayrshire, Scotland, east of Irvine town centre, on the old main road from Irvine to Kilmarnock. It is sited on a ridge between two rivers. As archaeological excavations near the village centre have found a signifi ...

Troon Troon is a town in South Ayrshire, situated on the west coast of Ayrshire in Scotland, about north of Ayr and northwest of Glasgow Prestwick Airport. Troon has a port with freight services and a yacht marina. Up until January 2016, P&O Ferrie ...

, and

Kilmarnock Kilmarnock (, sco, Kilmaurnock; gd, Cill Mheàrnaig (IPA: ʰʲɪʎˈveaːɾnəkʲ, "Marnock's church") is a large town and former burgh in East Ayrshire, Scotland and is the administrative centre of East Ayrshire, East Ayrshire Council. ...

in the west of

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

, and

Carlisle Carlisle ( , ; from xcb, Caer Luel) is a city that lies within the Northern England, Northern English county of Cumbria, south of the Anglo-Scottish border, Scottish border at the confluence of the rivers River Eden, Cumbria, Eden, River C ...

, Lancaster and

Morecambe Morecambe ( ) is a seaside town and civil parish in the City of Lancaster district in Lancashire, England. It is in Morecambe Bay on the Irish Sea. Name The first use of the name was by John Whitaker in his ''History of Manchester'' (1771), w ...

in the north-west of England, serving over 40,000 homes. → Smallworld provided broadband, telephone, and

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...

services to residential customers from 2001 until 2014, when the company was acquired by

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, Cable television, television and Internet access, internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, Berkshire, Reading, Engla ...

History

The company was founded in the summer of 2001 as Omne Communications by former employees of BT and NTL. Their television service launched in December after being granted a local delivery service licence by the ITC. In May 2002, Omne Communications entered

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative assistant, Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an admini ...

. On 1 February 2003, it was announced that CLS Holdings, owners of WightCable, had acquired a 76% stake in the company for £4.1 million, saving it from closure. The company was rebranded later that year from Omne to WightCable North. In January 2006, WightCable North was sold by CLS Holdings, at a loss of £2.1 million, to Netfonics. In March 2007, WightCable North was rebranded as Smallworld Media. In December 2009, Smallworld Media rebranded itself as Smallworld Cable and introduced a new logo. On 18 December 2009, Smallworld announced that they had completed core network upgrades and planned to roll out faster 50Mbit/s

DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...

3.0 broadband across its cable network. The company also confirmed they had connected the large village of

Dreghorn Dreghorn is a village in North Ayrshire, Scotland, east of Irvine town centre, on the old main road from Irvine to Kilmarnock. It is sited on a ridge between two rivers. As archaeological excavations near the village centre have found a signifi ...

to their network, increasing their customer base by around 1,200 homes. In early 2013, Smallworld Cable changed its name to Smallworld Fibre. On 3 February 2014, Smallworld Fibre was acquired by

for an undisclosed fee. The deal saw Smallworld's network merged into Virgin Media's during 2014. In December 2014, Virgin Media axed the Smallworld Fibre brand and switched all viewers to the Virgin Media network.

Products and services

As a "triple play" cable provider with its own network, Smallworld Fibre provided cable TV, broadband, and fixed line telephone services.

Broadband

Smallworld provided three tiers of service (as of Dec 2013) of 25Mbit/s, 50Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s download speeds. These speeds were only available to customers within their cable network footprint and

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

broadband services were available for customers who wanted service outside their cable network. Wireless home network kits were available to customers for an additional fee. Standard installation tended to be free of charge when broadband was taken as part of a bundle with other products. Smallworld advertised their broadband as a fibre-optic network, but they utilised a

hybrid fibre-coaxial Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) is a telecommunications industry term for a broadband network that combines optical fiber and coaxial cable. It has been commonly employed globally by cable television operators since the early 1990s. In a hybrid fi ...

network to distribute service to customers, similar to the topology of Virgin Media. Smallworld ran a "

speedometer A speedometer or speed meter is a gauge that measures and displays the instantaneous speed of a vehicle. Now universally fitted to motor vehicles, they started to be available as options in the early 20th century, and as standard equipment f ...

" on its website that gave a "live" view of the average network speed on the cable network they provided but not the internet speed. As of 21 December 2009 this speed stood at 24.4Mbit/s (out of 25Mbit/s). The speed test was removed by March 2010, though they gave a server for speed testing on speedtest.net. The upload speeds were 200kbit/s for the 2Mbit/s download service, 350kbit/s for 10Mbit/s, 512kbit/s for 25Mbit/s, and 1.5Mbit/s for 50Mbit/s.

Cable TV

Smallworld provided a digital TV service over its cable TV network with over 120 channels including all local terrestrial services and subscription services, such as

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

and

Sky Movies Sky Cinema is a British subscription film service owned by Sky Group (a division of Comcast). In the United Kingdom, Sky Cinema channels currently broadcast on the Sky satellite and Virgin Media cable platforms, and in addition Sky Cinema ...

. Multiroom services were available for an additional fee on top of the main TV subscription.

Telephone

Fixed line phone services were available within the Smallworld Fibre network with features such as

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is ...

call forwarding Call forwarding, or call diversion, is a telephony feature of all telephone switching systems which redirects a telephone call to another destination, which may be, for example, a mobile or another telephone number where the desired called party is ...

and

voicemail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...

available. Smallworld offered free local calls to its cable phone customers and its local area covering Scotland, Northern Ireland and "a large section of Northern England".

Sponsorship

Smallworld Cable was the main strip sponsor of

Kilmarnock F.C. Kilmarnock Football Club, commonly known as Killie, is a Scottish professional football team based in the town of Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire. The team is currently managed by Derek McInnes, who was appointed in January 2022. The club has achieve ...

References

External links

Official website
archived 24 February 2014 {{CATV Europe Cable television companies of the United Kingdom Former internet service providers of the United Kingdom Telecommunications companies established in 2001 Companies disestablished in 2014 Virgin Media Companies that have entered administration in the United Kingdom Economy of North Ayrshire