Job Losses Strike UK Full Fibre ISP Truespeed as Build Expected to Slow

Sad news today as another alternative builder of full fibre broadband, Truespeed, has confirmed to ISPreview that a good chunk of its workforce are now facing redundancy (possibly c. 150) and the rollout of their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to homes in the South West of England is due to slow.

At present Truespeed’s rural network, which is mostly focused upon serving premises in parts of Devon, Wiltshire and Somerset, has already covered 91,000 ready for service premises (up from 75k in May 2023) and they’re home to over 17,000 customers (up from 15k). The operator also held an “ambitious” overall target of reaching 500,000 properties by the end of 2026, but that will now have to be updated.

Unfortunately, the Bath-based provider, which according to their website “employs over 200 people” (we believe it’s currently 260), is not immune to the same strains as many other digital network builders are experiencing. Key challenges for operators in this market tend to flow from rapidly rising costs (build, leases etc.), aggressive competition from rivals (e.g. overbuild) and the related need to secure a viable level of consumer take-up.

Such issues are known to be dampening the appetite of investors to push new money into such operators, and to keep the funding taps fully open for those with existing commitments. Situations like this tend to thus result in slower builds (i.e. forces the operator to focus on growing take-up, rather than laying new fibre) and that can put pressure on jobs.

After a bit of digging, Truespeed has now confirmed to ISPreview that they’re also having to change their plans and cut jobs.

Truespeed Statement to ISPreview

In the last few years, Truespeed has grown rapidly to offer full fibre [FTTP] connectivity to over 91,000 RFS (Ready For Service) premises and has connected over 17,000 customers in the Southwest. We are now calibrating our business plan to match the pace of infrastructure funding and the higher cost of capital in the economy.

As a result of this exercise, Truespeed will reorganise to focus on improving sales and customer penetration in its existing network whilst continuing to build at a more steady rate.

To this end, we have started a consultation process with our staff and are focused on aligning our teams and roles to the revised ambition. Our focus is to go through this process and support affected colleagues, so we will not be releasing any further details at this time.

Truespeed maintains its ambition to connect and serve as many customers as possible with its ultrafast full fibre network in the Southwest.

Put another way, the operator is currently trying to reduce all forms of spend, including on network deployment and other areas etc. The goal is to ensure some degree of financial self-sufficiency, which is understood to be supported by Truespeed’s principle shareholder, Aviva Investors.

The rollout won’t be stopped, but it will slow a lot while they switch to focus on growing take-up, at least until such time as they can find enough money to ramp back up again (assuming that happens). Naturally this has an impact on jobs and some sources have indicated that around 150 workers could be facing the chop at the end of the current consultation.

The first sign of problems arguably occurred last year after the state aid supported Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) programme “terminated” two contracts with Truespeed, which they said had suffered delays in their £6.7m (public investment) deal to deploy a full fibre network to cover 15,172 premises (here).