Mashood Ahmad is the CEO and founder of Gigabit IQ, an award-winning UK broadband provider dedicated to delivering safer, smarter, and faster internet through fully managed Wi-Fi and industry-leading online safety tools. A recognised voice in digital inclusion and child online protection, Mashood is a Council Member at ISPA UK and a vocal advocate for stronger ISP accountability in protecting families online.

Under Mashood’s leadership, Gigabit IQ has pioneered services like FamilyGuard+, a network-level parental control solution designed to meet the real-world needs of modern families. He has spearheaded initiatives supporting vulnerable communities, including children in care, refugees, and low-income households, through fair access broadband and safety education.

Mashood is the author of the white paper “Beyond the Act: The Hidden Layer of Online Harm No One’s Regulating”, which challenges current UK online safety legislation and proposes a new national ISP Safety Rating System, akin to NCAP for cars or Ofsted for schools.

A frequent speaker on digital safety, Mashood is leading an Online Safety & ISP Accountability session at the UK Internet Parliament Conference with ISPA, and continues to work with regulators, MPs, and safety groups to shape a safer digital future for all.

Takeaways:

• The introduction of digital safety measures is akin to implementing seat belts in cars, enhancing Internet safety.
• Gigabit IQ aims to provide parental controls that ensure children access only age-appropriate online content.
• The company's initiative, Parent Line, offers parents guidance on navigating online safety and concerns.
• Faster Internet speeds necessitate enhanced safety protocols to protect children from harmful online content.
• Gigabit IQ advocates for industry-wide parental controls, empowering parents to safeguard their children online.
• Digital inclusion is essential; broadband should be accessible to all communities, regardless of their location.

Chapters:

• 00:17 - Digital Safety in the Age of the Internet
• 01:41 - The Launch of Parent Line
• 13:47 - Advocating for Online Safety in Broadband Services
• 21:12 - The Importance of Granular Parental Controls
• 28:33 - Digital Inclusion and Accessibility
• 39:24 - Empowering Parents for Online Safety

https://www.gigabitiq.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashood-ahmad-gigabitiq/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/gigabit-iq

https://www.facebook.com/GigabitIQ

https://www.instagram.com/gigabit_iq/

https://x.com/GigabitIQ

https://www.tiktok.com/@gigabitiq

https://www.youtube.com/@GigabitIQ

https://bsky.app/profile/gigabitiq.bsky.social

https://mastodon.social/@GigabitIQ

https://www.parentline.uk

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Network of the public highway became safer through the introduction of seat belts. And similarly, the Internet is one digital superhighway and we are all in the provision of providing much faster Internet speeds.

But with faster Internet speeds, we also should provide digital seat belts. And so that's essentially what we are doing as a company.

We are lobbying not only government, but Ofcom, but also our industry to make sure that all service providers have the ability to provide some form of parental controls so that children who are accessing the Internet have some kind of restrictions or restraints or safety mechanisms so that they don't have access to harmful content which could be in the likes of say pornography or violence or cyberbullying or, or suicide or you know, body image type things, not only from a time perspective but also from a content perspective. I've got five children and my children age between 6 and 19 and so I don't want my 6 year old seeing the same content as my 13 year old.

I don't want my 13 year old seeing the same content as My 19 year old.

And so we provide that granularity so that I can individually protect my 6 year old from content that only 6 year old should see and my 13 year old have only content of a 13 year old should see and my older children have content that only they should see. We've created a new platform that we're about to launch soon.

It's called Parent Line, which is very similar to Childline, but it's really a source for parents to ask any question about any online safety topic and it provides the information so you know, if a parent has any concerns about say for example Snapchat or Roblox or any device or any application or anything online, even if they, for example, they see a screenshot of their child's device and it's got these emojis because our Gen Z children are talking in a different vocabulary compared to parents nowadays and they're not understanding what these emojis mean. They can upload that onto our Parent Line platform and it can translate into what this means.

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast. The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world.

Listen to teachers, parents and mentors, share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all.

Bashir Ahmad is the CEO and founder of Gigabitiq, an award winning UK broadband provider dedicated to delivering safer, smarter and faster Internet through fully managed Wi fi and industry leading online safety tools. A recognized Voice in digital inclusion and child online protection.

Under Michoud's leadership, Gigabitiq has pioneered services like FamilyGuard Plus, a network level parental control solution designed to meet the real world needs of modern families.

He has spearheaded initiatives supporting vulnerable communities including children in care, refugees and low income households through fair access, broadband and safety education. Hi Mashu, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast.

I think this might actually be the first time we've spoken specifically about broadband and we often talk about Internet safety and online safety and the sorts of things that we can and can't control.

So I think actually having someone at the heart of understands the, the technical side of those things and actually having a solution as well is going to be really, really important. So yeah, thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you so much, Mark, for having me on.

So tell us about gigabit IQ for those people that have not come across it before. As I mentioned just before we started recording, I was so delighted when we had full fiber coming into our village.

It kind of revolutionized what I was able to do from an online perspective. So yeah, take us into the company.

And when I moved back to the uk, I originally lived in London and I decided to, you know, you watch Escape to the country and location, location, location and basically you get an urge to move to the country. And so I moved to a small village in Hampshire, between Hampshire and Surrey, called Grayshaw.

And effectively by me moving to the area, one thing I hadn't realized was that the provision for broadband communities is pretty poor.

And so one of the things I realized, especially during COVID was the fact that when everyone was working from home, we had to rush in the Internet, which is basically, you know, we weren't able to utilize the Internet at the same time, you know, with, with me working from home where my kids homeschooling, et cetera. And so that became a need for us to build our own fiber network.

And so Grish Gigabitiq was formerly called Greyshot Gigabit, which is basically the villages that we are serving, which is in Greyshot and Hindhead in East Hampshire and Surrey Hills. And so we built our own full fiber network to really serve these rural communities that were underserved from a fiber perspective.

And what fiber provides is the ability to have a much faster broadband experience and much faster with gigabit speeds. And so the value that we provide to our customers is that they don't need to have those issues with buffering or with low upload speeds, etc.

Because whatever we provide from a download perspective is the same as we provide from an upload perspective.

And so whether you're watching Netflix or you're on Disney, or you're on your social media or you're gaming, or you're doing VPN or video conference calls like this, you get a very, very good experience with minimal latency and much faster Internet. And so it's a much better experience for our customers. And that's essentially where Gigabitiq was formed as part of Grayshot Gigabit.

And I can attest to this, having had a well known Internet provider before, but with the old sort of copper wires and all of that kind of thing, the podcasting wasn't quite so bad. But certainly live streaming was really, really difficult.

And like say the upload speed, which most people don't take as thought at, is the download speed, just was suddenly revolutionized once I got full fiber. The ability to not only go to maybe YouTube, but multiple places in one go and not even have to think about it was just, was just incredible.

So I'm, I'm fiber all the way and really pleased to be able to sort of support that as much as I can.

I mean, frankly speaking, that's, that's where the differences between people who've got a traditional copper service, I mean, so one thing that we as an industry take, you know, are trying to push this narrative is that not all fibers equal. So, you know, people believe that they might have fiber, for example, they might think they've got super fast fiber, which is the Open Reach network.

But that's fiber to the cabinet. And then from the cabinet to your home is copper.

And so it depends how far you are from those green cabinets in cities and towns and villages for you to determine how much speed you actually get. And so that's why you might have a different experience compared to your labor. Fiber negates all of that.

With fiber you can be up to about 40 miles away from the, from, from the central office and you'll still get the same speed. So it's, it's, that's all negated. But certainly the upload is really the, the killer.

And so that's where fiber makes a big, big difference because most fiber providers now provide a symmetrical speed. So whatever the download is, say for 100 meg, you get 100 meg upload. If you're on Gig, but we provide, you get a gig upload.

And so all of those issues, uploading work from home video streaming. This type of solution, you know, you have a much better experience.

So let's talk about the availability because you talked about a very sort of like say your local area and how it first started. How does that affect people who live further away now? How can they be involved and get those benefits too with you?

Yes.

And so before then, as I mentioned, the incumbent provider, which was BT, was built on BT's Openreach network, which is just a last mile copper network. And so that has its limitations in terms of speed.

And depending how far as I mentioned you are from, the green cabinet determines what type of experience you get. Some people who live far away can get very, very low speeds, which means that they can't even watch say HD content, you know, on tv.

They might buy the latest TV but they can't actually watch if it's still on standard definition. So if you have kids and you tell them to watch a standard definition TV nowadays, they'll think, oh my God, what kind of prehistoric TV is this?

You know, they all used to HD and 4K and all of those things.

And so, and so basically through the push from the government for Project Gigabit, it's now caused that lots of providers like ourselves decided to build their own physical fiber network because openreach wasn't, wasn't fast enough in building. And so you have lots of new fiber providers who have built a full fiber network across the country.

And as a result of that, we as a company also decided to, you know, take note of that and say, okay, fine, well, we've provided a really great service in Gracious and Hindhead and the local areas that we're covering with our own fiber. However, we want to provide our services beyond that.

And so we are an ASP and other wholesale networks and right now we can cover around about 500 towns and villages across, across England and covering around about 1.5 million premises. And the fiber roller is continuing apace, I think around about 77% of the country, or maybe more than that, actually has fiber provision right now.

And so it is continuing.

And you can get fiber in the Highlands of Scotland, you could get fiber in Cornwall, you could get fiber in, in, you know, the South Downs, which is where the national park is, where we are based, as well as Galen fiber in majority of towns and cities.

And so that's going to cause a challenge for people who don't have other means of connectivity.

So in terms of why people would be interested in this, I think it's important to realize that it's not just about cost because each actual provider has different things that they offer. And obviously cost is, I think, often what most people first look at because you can get a deal if you keep switching and that kind of thing.

But obviously, as an education podcast, we talk about the online safety and some of the extra things that people may not look at in as much depth to begin with, but I think it certainly as a parent, it's one of those things that starts to become more and more important as your children start to get older. So take us into what it is that you do, which is kind of supportive for that and sort of the active role that you take as part of that community.

Yes. So we consider ourselves the UK's safest broadband Internet service provider.

And what I mean by that is that similar to, I mean, Mark, you're, you're, you're probably as old as I am.

I mean, so growing up in the, in the 70s and 80s, there were times whereby, you know, seat belts in cars weren't mandatory and especially rear seat belts. And, you know, there wasn't a concept of having child safety restraints or, you know, baby seats or booster seats, etc. Etc.

And so, you know, the network of the public highway became safer through the introduction of seat belts. And similarly, the Internet is one digital superhighway and we are all in the provision of providing much faster Internet speeds.

But with faster Internet speeds, we also should provide digital seatbelts. And so that's essentially what we are doing as a company.

We are lobbying not only government, but Ofcom, but also our industry to make sure that all service providers have the ability to provide some form of parental controls so that children who are accessing the Internet have some kind of restrictions or restraints or safety mechanisms so that they aren't, they don't have access to harmful Content which could be in the likes of, say, pornography or violence or cyberbullying or suicide or, you know, body image type things not only from a time perspective but also from a content perspective.

And so basically what we're advocating to our industry and what makes us different and why we believe that we're the UK safest Internet service provide, is that we provide a level of parental controls for our customers and also for people who don't have our broadband, such that they can feel safe when they're on the Internet and their kids can feel they, they have peace of mind that their kids are safe on the Internet.

And it's really just the, the ability to be able to control that through your router, isn't it?

It's the, you still got the same, the same things coming into your house, but it's the, it's the technology and the things that specifically is gigabit IQ have. If it kind of gives you those sort of safeguards.

Yeah. So I would say that the key element of a broadband product, so firstly we have around about 30 million broadband lines.

And so people access the Internet two ways.

They'll either access the Internet over a WI FI network which is provided by the broadband company, or they probably access via a mobile network which is provided by a, a mobile provider, you know, like O2, Vodafone, EE etc.

And so with those 30 million broadband lines, we as an industry have responsibility to provide some kind of gateway controls that, you know, allow children to access various sites. And so, you know, the Internet, as I said, is one big highway and you can go anywhere on Internet at any point in time.

And so, you know, to get verification of those sites is important as a, as a consumer. And so what, what we're, what we're trying to do is to make sure that the safety element is provided to all parents.

What you mentioned about the router is important simply because if you don't as a provider manage the WI FI experience, you can't provide parental controls or any added value services on top. And so many providers, they provide routers to customers, but they don't actually manage the router.

And if you don't manage the router, you can't provide a safety element on top. You're left to a customer or a parent taking a third party application which sometimes just resides on the child's device.

And so the problem with that is that, you know, people access content in all sorts of devices, not just smartphones. And so people access content on iPads, will access content on their Xbox on their laptops, etc.

And so you then need to have parental controls per device and that becomes impossible because there's no such parental controls per device for every single type of application, every single device.

So what we do and what makes us different is that we provide a network wide parental control so that any device connected to our WI fi is automatically protected.

And so that's the difference between a broadband provider provided parental controls and say an app based parental control app that you can buy off the Internet. That is really only a device specific solution. And there's free ones out there as well.

Like Apple have one, but it's only linked for Apple devices and Android have one, it's only linked for Android devices. And so there are lots of devices that are missing the gap on that basis.

And I think the reason I know these conversations are so important is that even if it's like we talked to begin with about the fact that every provider is equal or the fact that broadband you think is super fast speed, but you forget about the like say the green box to your house being different.

And I think just understanding all the different elements of it and the same with the safety as well, the ability to know that I think my child is safe because they have an app on their phone like you say is very different.

And then someone else comes into the house, a friend's got a sleepover and they've got a different device and then all of a sudden you may sort of just open the doors again. And I think just, just being aware that all these things have a real implication.

And then when you're, you know, you're renewing your, your, your service provider the next time you're actually able to ask the right questions, look at the right details and make those decisions with a real sort of idea of what you're trying to achieve and why you're trying to do it.

And I think that that is part of a challenge that most parents aren't aware. So lots of Internet service providers don't provide any parental controls because they don't provide a WI FI management capability.

So they'll provide you the router. And if you have an issue with your WI fi, typically they'll say to you, you know, contact the router manufacturer.

And so that might be a third party router. And, and you know, some of their call centers are outside the country and, and if you call the call center, they won't know who you are.

What, what, what, who's your service provider and they don't provide any, you know parental controls as such. And so you know, there are parental controls available, but not all of them are equal.

One of the largest providers in the uk, the incumbent provider, they have parental controls, but their parental controls is a one size fits all approach. So either the whole family is protected or no one is protected. And so there's no granularity.

And so if you've got children of multiple ages and you as parents also wish to access any type of content, you know, you can't utilize that parental control capability because you know, if you say, for example, you want to watch the news or you want to do some research and you know, you want to do some homework, etc.

The parental controls will be so prohibitive that they will prevent you from accessing any sites that you might think is quite a normal site for you to access. Even like Sky News for example, or something like that.

Because there is content available on Sky News which is talking about wars and you know, conflicts and etc, etc and you won't be even access simple information that most people would think is quite normal information.

But you know, obviously it's not pertinent for a child to access because you have that one size fits all approach, then people then reluctantly don't use parental controls. And so what makes us different in the sense is that we provide parental controls with granularity. We understand.

I mean, I've got five children and my children age between 6 and 19. And so I don't want my 6 year old seeing the same content as my 13 year old. I don't want my 13 year old seeing the same content as My 19 year old.

And so we provide that granularity so that I can individually protect my 6 year old from content that only 6 year old just see and my 13 or I have only content of a 13 year old to see. And my older children have content that only they should see.

And so basically it's like, it's like having, you know, going to the cinema and you know, you're only allowed to watch a PG12 film or a 15 film or 18 film based upon your age.

So similarly the Internet should have that capability and that's what we provide in terms of having that granularity so that parents can make an impact, informed choice to protect their kids based upon content that they should allow for their kids.

So this is very much sort of based, sort of from a home perspective. Do you also provide Internet for schools and people sort of beyond that?

And does that work in exactly the same way or the fact that it's A school or an organization, there's a little bit more sort of information needed.

Yeah.

So basically the government now has a program which is very similar to, you know, Project Gigabit is called Connect the Classroom program, which is essentially to make sure that all schools have fiber provision so that all schools can get much faster Internet.

Because as you can imagine, there's lots of online learning going on in schools and schools are actively giving out devices to children, you know, for the capability of that online learning. And so as schools, as you and your listeners.

Listeners are aware, is that the government also created the KICKSEA guidelines for keep children safe in education guidelines. And as part of that there are provisions for all schools to have content control.

So similar that we provide our content control for the home, there needs to be content controls for all schools so that children haven't the capability to access content that they shouldn't be accessing.

And so those content filters are there in place in order for a safeguarding perspective, but also, you know, so that children don't stumble across content that they shouldn't be sharing. And if there is a WI fi environment in that and children may or may not take their devices into the schools, etc.

That should also be covered in terms of the access to the Internet, whether that's through the school's WI fi or some other capability. And so schools are being mandated to provide these types of contact controls.

And we work with schools up and down the country in terms of providing not only the ability to have faster fiber with a better speed, but also to make sure that we provide responsible Internet into the school through those content controls.

And are those controls granular in the same kind of way as they are at home as well?

And the main reason I ask this is because I've worked in some schools where you can't even open up YouTube and as a music teacher was one of my resources which was very beneficial, or accessing the online library that I needed for my kids to play along to as a track. And then other schools not so much now like you say because of the change in the guidelines, but was much more open access.

And so it seems to be different per school.

So having the granular thing where the children are absolutely have the controls that they need for their relative age group, but also then allowing teachers and other people to get the access that they need as well without having to go through many, many hoops or many, many email conversations.

Yeah. So very, very similarly there are some one size fits all approach with some time of some type of content control.

Provisions and so that granularity is in advanced systems. And so absolutely schools need to have granularity based upon ages, based upon requirements.

And most of the vendors that the schools will either outsource to or the providers that they'll outsource to, or sometimes the in school IT systems and the IT teams that are working with the schools have the ability to control that content accordingly. And so, so it's really the policy of how they wish to adopt that content control. But it's certainly moving to a much more granular system.

And that is the case because every school is different, the year groups are different, the subjects are different. And so people need access to certain type of content.

And if you have again a one size blanket fits all approach, then you're right, you're not going to be able to access YouTube for example. And as a music teacher you won't be able to access some of the valuable resources that you wish to inspire with the kids in the classroom.

Now, I know fair access and usage is important to you as well. Take me sort of into where that stems from originally and sort of how you're supporting people with that.

In terms of access usage for the broader perspective or just. Yeah, so basically, I mean most providers have the belief that broadband is ubiquitous and it should be.

It's basically a utility that everybody should have access to.

And so governments, the un, local governments, everybody's trying to promote the need for broadband because it's basically the fourth utility after you know, water, gas and electricity. It's effectively become the fourth utility and you know, trying take Wi Fi or Internet of a child and sometimes you get tantrums, etc.

And people go to people's homes and public spaces etc, and the first thing they asked, or a restaurant first thing they asked unfortunately is what's the WI fi password for example? Or do you have WI fi?

And so that always on connectivity also has its downside, but essentially it's, it's part of life that everything now is being controlled via the Internet and we have applications on our phones and you know, it means that we are always connected, which, you know, as a parent myself and you know, as a tech leader myself, I do like my digital detox, frankly speaking, I do try and you know, turn off from there, but essentially as long as I've got connectivity, I'm happy that there's connectivity everywhere around me as long as I have the ability to control that capability to turn off when I need to turn off. But essentially the obligation and the government is pushing this is for digital inclusion for all.

And it's part of the requirements of to try and make digital education important for people who may not be aware because everything's moved online, banking is moved online and schools are doing online education platforms, etc. And so that was really heightened during COVID time frame when everything became remote.

And so that disinclusivity is something that the government has realized.

And you know, there are big schemes and big pushes for dis inclusion wherever possible, whether that's through traditional copper, whether that's through fiber or even satellite broadband where in hard to reach areas fiber is not available. And so that is a, that's a minimum requirement right now that everybody needs.

And so there are schemes to promote just inclusion for vulnerable families, for people on low means income through in social broadband, social tariffs and also for the elderly. I mean we work in remote areas and we have a very high elderly population in the areas that we are because we're in rural parts of England.

And so one of the challenges that we're looking to try and work through is to make sure that everybody who is of elderly population understands how to use the Internet, how it's protected from the Internet from, you know, cyber security threats etc scams and those types of things and understand how you know how to get online and do some of the basic things that they may seem alien because of their age, but it's something that is necessary because as I mentioned, schools, hospitals, surgeries, banking, everything has become online.

Yeah, it's a problem, a pretty big thing, isn't it?

And I certainly know from sort of our family, there's sort of depending on the ages, there's sort of an organic way to do that and sometimes there's not. I mean, there are plenty of places that don't have a bank in their, in their local town anymore or.

Absolutely, yeah.

And so it seems easy and brilliant when you're just doing it without even thinking about it.

But if you've never done that in your life very much, it certainly is a bigger, a big take and like say doctor's appointments, all those sorts of things. So I think anything we can do collectively as well as a kind of a broader society to help support everyone, it's for everyone's benefit.

And I think it's why all these conversations are so interconnected. We're talking about broadband today, but just access and technology generally, they're all part of that sort of bigger picture as they go through.

And am I right in thinking that you were involved in a white paper and tell us A little bit about that and how you got involved in that.

Yeah, so we worked with, so this, this summer we hosted a conference or we worked with the Internet Service Provider association, which is the national body for pretty much all Internet service providers. And they have an annual conference at Parliament called the Online Safety Conference. And we were the lead sponsor for that particular conference.

And as part of that, that's really our push, not just to government, but also to the regulatory body, which is ofcom, to really give them an understanding and education that whilst they've created new laws like the Online Safety act, which essentially is there to try and protect children from accessing harmful sites through age verification mechanisms. So harmful sites should have some kind of over 18 verification mechanism for them.

But more so, as I mentioned before, because we have 30 million broadband lines, we have a responsibility as an industry, as Internet service providers to provide access controls for parents who may choose or choose not to deploy, but at least they have the capability of having those parental controls.

So our push as part of this drive to Ofcom and the government and to create this white paper is basically to say that all Internet service providers should have a minimum level of parental controls that they should offer to parents and those parents then have the right to use them or not use them.

So we don't believe in any type of censorship of the Internet, but we do believe in providing parents for tools so that they can provide some kind of safety mechanisms for users which are parents and children. And as such, that's why we are pushing very similar to other safety mechanisms that we have in various industries.

So cars have car safety mechanisms like the Euro NCAP safety, so it determines how safe a car is in terms of, you know, the safety requirements for airbags and seat belts and side impact bars and, and other things that cars have nowadays. But also we have safety hygiene labels, food safety ratings and other safety implementations.

And so as a company, we decided that, okay, broadband providers should have safety controls and, you know, we should have a safety rating mechanism that all broadband providers should adhere to and customers should have the ability to understand how safe their broadband provider is.

You know, how, you know, if I choose this broadband provider, yes, speed is important, yes, availability is important, but then more so, if I've got kids, what safety mechanisms are available for children if they come online? Do I have any ability to protect them from, say, social media? Do I have any ability to protect them from harmful sites?

And so that's what we are lobbying for to government and to Ofcom to say we as an industry have duties and obligations as well. And you know, don't just try and police the Internet through age verification simply because it's unpolicable, frankly speaking.

I mean, yes, they can try and target some of the bigger and well known sites and they are doing age verification, but the Internet is a myriad of networks from all over the world and children and people can access the Internet from anywhere. And so yet you might not be able to access certain content from some of the major sites, for example, in the adult industry.

And they might have age verification, but it's not hard for a child to go and search on Google on page 10 or 12 or 15 other sites. And they don't have age verification because they're not bound by UK law and they're a server that's out of Ukraine or China or somewhere else.

And so children will still find access, you know, access capability.

And even one thing that we noticed through the Online Safety act is that after VH verification did come on board, unfortunately, four of the top five apps that are downloaded happen to VPNs. And so children are now accessing VPNs, which basically masks their identity as if they're coming from abroad.

And so children can access those content and people can access that content by just using a vpn. And so that's also a problem for the industry. You know, luckily at Gigabitiq, we our parental controls block VPNs as well.

But you know, most providers don't have parental controls, let alone solutions to block VPNs. And so that's why we championed this white paper to push government and OFCOM to realize that we as an industry can do more.

And this is why I really enjoy the podcast so much, is because we can have these kind of conversations and people can sort of hear and see the people that are actually working for the benefit of everybody behind the, you know, you see the adverts on the underground or on the telly or whatever, and it's all about this deal or do this or do that.

But to realize, you know, there are human faces, human personalities, human people running companies that are trying to support children and families in the best way that they can, as well as like we've talked about already with the practical side of things and the difference between different organizations. So yeah, I really appreciate the ability to be able to share that with everybody.

Now, obviously the acronym FAR is important to us here at Education on far. And by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment.

What is it about those words or one of those words that Sort of comes to mind when you see that.

I love the word empowerment because that's essentially what we're trying to do.

We are trying to educate and empower our parents, whether they are on our broadband network or on anybody else's broadband network, to understand the dangers and risks of their children online. And so they should be vigilant about that.

And so, you know, they should try and create the resilience in their home that protects their children from these online dangers. And, and I mean, I'd say that sometimes children don't search for this. You know, this is not something that all children are searching for.

You know, we don't have bad kids in the course. Sometimes kids are sent something on their phones, on their devices that you know has come from other kids or something that they've been just sent.

And the algorithm, as soon as you open this, you know, these instant shorts and feeds and tick tock videos, etc, as soon as you open one thing just through curiosity or something like that, it starts sending out a whole host of other content similarly. And so you're bombarded with it. And so that type of resilience and that type of empowerment is something that we are trying to push for parents.

And what we've created, which is sort of like from your inspiration and also feedback that we got from our parents, is that we've created a new platform that we're about to launch soon.

It's called Parent Line, which is very similar to childline, but it's really a source for parents to ask any question about any online safety topic and it provides the information.

So you know, if a parent has any concerns about say for example, Snapchat or Roblox or any device or any application or anything online, even if they, for example, they see a screenshot of their child's device and it's got these emojis because our Gen Z children are talking in a different vocabulary compared to parents nowadays and they're not understanding what these emojis mean. They can upload that onto our Parent Line platform and it can translate into what this means.

And so those causes for concern, they don't have to be a broadband subscriber of gigabit iq, but they can utilize the Parent Line application. It's really to empower the parents so that they can have the resilience in the home to protect their kids online.

Fantastic. That's a really, really powerful thing.

And I think it's one of the things we sort of try and promote here, is the fact that we're all trying to support everyone in the best way that we can. And let's say sometimes it can be regulatory, sometimes it just needs that kind of community aspect and be able to access that.

I think the skills and the information you need by people who really understand what that is and can actually support you in that particular area. Whatever your sort of issue is or that your problem or your inquiry is a really, really key thing. So Mashoud, thank you so much.

It's been really fascinating and I think really important conversation.

So can you just tell us where people can go to find out more information obviously about Gigabitiq but also anything else that would be of benefit for them?

Yeah, so our main source of information is our website which is www.gigabitiq. so G I G A B I T I Q.com gigabitiq.com so that's our main source of information.

And so whether customers wish to, you know, who we can serve, I mean if we could do a postcode search, we can verify if we can serve them on our broadband if they, if they're not served by us, but they're concerned about their children. We do provide our WI fi routers and our Gigabit IQ app, which is award winning app for the parental controls and cyber security.

We do provide it to any customer whether they have our broadband or not our broadband.

So they could go to our safer broadband page on our website and they can actually take our service and they can just put that on, on the back of their existing broadband network and you'll protect their whole home from both cyber security and also parental control. So we're not limited to our service, just with regards to our broadband service.

And as I mentioned before, we have a new site coming on board which is called parentline.uk and that will be the ability for any parent to ask any question that they wish to ask with regards to online safety and that's something that any parent across, across the country can ask. It's not linked to our broadband service as such.

Amazing. Mashoud, thank you so much indeed.

And we'll have these links in the show descriptions as well so people can click through and get all that at their fingertips. So yeah, thank you so much. Keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing how it progresses in the future. Yeah, great to speak to you.

Thank you very much for having me, Mark, really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

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