Hmm.. Angie Pledges 10Gbps Fibre Optic Broadband to 3 Million UK Premises

Who? A strange and unexpected press release just crossed our desk, which stems from a company in the Netherlands that we’ve not heard of before, Angie Communications. Essentially they plan to “aggressively” rollout a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 3 million premises and make “4.5G” and 5G mobile broadband available to 95% and 90% of the UK respectively by 2021.

The operator, which was formerly known as iUHBA Networks, promotes itself as being “a next-generation communications firm with a long and remarkable history” and claims that their proposed plan will “[leapfrog] the incumbent providers’ fragmented and outdated services” (we assume that is a veiled reference to BT).

Angie further claims to be “the largest new entrant in the communications market” and one that has financial commitments in place in excess of €300m (£215m), which apparently represents 10% of the company at a £2.15 billion valuation (this allegedly stems from direct investments). In addition, Angie is in the process of selling another £215m worth of equity, which is expected to close by September 2015. But we have struggled to verify any of this.

Otherwise the press release includes no quotes from the companies CEO, Neal Lachman (his LinkedIn profile makes for an interesting read), or any mentions of firm verifiable support from other businesses or political institutions in the United Kingdom. The operator also does not have Code Powers from Ofcom, without which it would be very difficult to proceed on a national scale, although there’s still time to get that resolved.

Never the less Angie centres itself around three key targets, which seem to mirror the commitments that they’ve also made for the Netherlands and.. strangely.. the USA. After a bit of digging we also managed to uncover a rough timescale for when each of these might be achieved.

Angie Communications – UK Goals (Total Lifetime Cost – £16.5 billion)

* Fourth generation (4.5G) Mobile Broadband network covering 95% of UK population by 2018
* Fifth generation (5G) Wireless Access network covering 90% of UK population by 2018
* 10 Gbps Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) infrastructure – 3 million connections throughout the United Kingdom by 2021

At this point our readers might well be forgiven for stuffing a mug full of salt into their mouths, at least until such time as we can find some solid credibility to back up the marketing spin. We’re also unsure what exactly they mean by “4.5G” and note that their FTTP deployment would focus on MTUs (residential) and MDUs (business).

In the meantime we view it as being incredibly unlikely that an otherwise unknown start-up, seemingly one without any major local network or business backers, could simply walk into the United Kingdom and do what has been promised above. Check out their project plan for more. We’re happy to be proven wrong of course, but right now it’s all just words.

On the “upside” their Facebook page features some videos of people driving sports cars in a parking lot. Hurray? We expect they’ll remove those quite quickly. Also, this. In other news, pies have been spotted in the sky, with pigs potentially flying nearby.