ISP Plans FTTP Broadband for 350K Premises in South West England

Alternative UK network providers seem to be cropping up like spring flowers and the latest to join that club is Jurassic Fibre, which has an ambition to invest over £250m into building a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 350,000 premises across Devon, Dorset and Somerset.

The target is incredibly ambitious for a provider that only established itself in 2018 and hasn’t yet built a “full fibre” network in the United Kingdom, which might otherwise be ringing alarm bells. However there are several reasons for cautious optimism.

Firstly, the CEO of Jurassic Fibre is Michael Maltby, a local resident of Sidmouth in East Devon. Michael is known to have helped build several fibre optic and similar networks around the world, including in Russia and the Caribbean. On the flip side Michael’s core skill set, according to Linkedin, is more in business and economics than telecoms.

Secondly, the ISP has just secured funding from Fern Trading Limited (Fern), advised by Octopus Investments (Octopus), which has acquired the company and will provide funding for an expansion plan that “could over the next few years exceed £250m, creating jobs and essential infrastructure.” Exactly how much of that has already been committed is unclear, but we suspect it’s a much smaller sum.

Michael Maltby, CEO of Jurassic Fibre, said:

“Jurassic Fibre is very pleased that Fern, advised by Octopus, has agreed to acquire the company and fund the roll out of its GPON ultrafast broadband network across the South West of England. It is a strong statement of faith both in the company and future of the region. Over the coming months and years, we look forward to working with communities, businesses and councils to build the digital infrastructure required to put the region at the forefront of the UK economy.”

Paul Latham, CEO of Fern, said:

“This is a great opportunity for Fern to back a highly experienced management team with a track record of building full fibre networks across the world, providing stable returns for our investors who want to put their money to work in the UK economy.”

John Sellgren, Dorset Council Executive Director for Place, said:

“Dorset welcomes this commercial investment. It will bring fantastic opportunities to the businesses, residents and visitors of Dorset. We recognise the importance of high speed reliable digital connectivity and this announcement gets Dorset well on its way to the Government’s ambition of full fibre for the whole country by 2033.

We look forward to working with Jurassic Fibre to facilitate their deployment.”

At present we know very little about what sort of packages and roll-out plan is being envisaged for this previously unknown provider, although their deployment will initially focus upon connecting up an area of East Devon between Exeter Airport and Exmouth (i.e. along the A376 corridor). Specific details should be coming soon.

Like all such altnets they will face a challenge from the fact that rival operators (e.g. Openreach (BT), Gigaclear, Wessex Internet and others) are also engaged in the slow process of deploying FTTP broadband networks, around both urban and rural parts of all three counties.

However it will take many years for those ISPs to help collectively achieve the Government’s aspiration for nationwide coverage by 2033, which should leave plenty of gaps for Jurassic Fibre to fill. Nevertheless it’s likely to be an uphill struggle, particularly with everybody else gobbling up all of the skilled contractors.

You only have to ask Gigaclear, an ISP that spent years building itself up from nothing into a more mature player, about the challenges involved in order to understand why simply throwing money at a roll-out isn’t always enough (here).

One other concern is that this patch-work of physically separate networks, while bringing more choice, may also create more confusion for consumers when they go shopping around for a new ISP. Inevitably we’d expect to see some consolidation further down the road.