ISP VISPA Stop Taking New UK Orders for British Fibre Networks

The MD of UK ISP VISPA, James Ormerod, has announced that they’ve “stopped accepting new orders” for broadband and phone services supplied on Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure that has been deployed by British Fibre Networks (i4 Technology Group) due, seemingly, to a lack of “support” and other “issues”.

Regular readers may recall that BFN first established itself in 2018 alongside a perhaps lofty aspiration to create an open access and 1Gbps capable full fibre broadband network to serve over 35% of UK new build homes by 2020 (this goal was not achieved) – tricky since Openreach, Virgin Media, OFNL and others already dominated that market. By the end of 2018 they were already claiming to have signed up 24,000 new homes via 50 housing developers (here), but that was the last solid update we had.

However, over the past few months’ we’ve begun to see an increase in customer complaints about developments where BFN are said to have deployed, which mostly reflect problems or significant delays with getting connected to the new network and issues with contacting support. But other customers have also complained about slow speeds, and we note that there are some County Court Judgments (CCJs) against one of the company’s.

Some of these gripes have been directed at BFN’s wholesale ISP partner, VISPA, which merely sells the service on to consumers. But in a worrying development, it appears as if end-users aren’t the only ones having trouble with BFN and, as a result, VISPA has decided to stop taking on new orders for the service.

James Ormerod, MD of VISPA, said:

“Over the past 18 months, we have faced several issues with British Fibre Networks, and as such, we are unable to offer the high standard of service that Vispa users are accustomed to on both our own and Openreach’s network.

As such, with effect from Monday 17th January 2022, we are no longer accepting new orders for broadband and phone services supplied on British Fibre Network’s infrastructure. We will do our very best to fulfil any orders placed before this date, but unfortunately, it may prove difficult without the support of British Fibre Networks.

For any existing Vispa customers that are connected to British Fibre Networks infrastructure, services will remain unaffected for the time being whilst discussions take place with the relevant parties and regulatory body.

It’s with deep regret that we have made this decision, and we advise anyone who has been impacted to contact British Fibre Networks or your property developer in order to find an alternative ISP or infrastructure provider.”

A quick look at i4’s website reveals that, in June 2021 (their last update), they appointed DLA Piper as their lawyers and would “shortly be announcing plans to significantly increase its build programme, which will see the company expand into all areas of the UK.” But clearly that may be difficult if they struggle to deliver a good level of support and service to their ISP partners.

The only other residential ISPs that continue to have an association with BFN are the little known ones of Tatton Tech (their website brings up a browser security notice in Firefox and Edge – possibly due to an out of date HTTPS certificate), Elanet and Pure Fibre Broadband (their website link brings up a PHP error message). We have contacted BFN for a comment and await their response.