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

Irvine, North Ayrshire Irvine ( ;
; ) is a town and former

Dreghorn, Troon, and Kilmarnock in the west of

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, and

Carlisle Carlisle ( , ; from ) is a city in the Cumberland district of Cumbria, England. Carlisle's early history is marked by the establishment of a settlement called Luguvalium to serve forts along Hadrian's Wall in Roman Britain. Due to its pro ...

, Lancaster and Morecambe in the northwest of England, where they served over 40,000 homes. Smallworld provided broadband, telephone, and

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

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

Virgin Media Virgin Media Limited is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 ...

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: the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. ** Administrative assistant, traditionally known as a se ...

. 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 50 Mbit/s DOCSIS 3.0 broadband across its cable network. The company also confirmed they had connected the large village of Dreghorn 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 December 2013) of 25 Mbit/s, 50 Mbit/s and 100 Mbit/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 wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

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 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 (instrument), 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 ...

" 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 24.4 Mbit/s (out of 25 Mbit/s). The speed test was removed by March 2010, though they gave a server for speed testing on speedtest.net. The upload speeds were 200 kbit/s for the 2 Mbit/s download service, 350 kbit/s for 10 Mbit/s, 512 kbit/s for 25 Mbit/s, and 1.5 Mbit/s for 50 Mbit/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 broadcasting of sports events, subscription sports channels operated by the satellite television, satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television ...

and Sky Movies. 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 that included features such as caller IDs, call forwarding and voicemail. 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".

Sponsorships

Smallworld Cable was the main strip sponsor of Kilmarnock F.C.

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