G.Networks Grab £4.6m to Bring Ultrafast Broadband to SMEs in London

Last month ISPreview.co.uk reported (here) that a new ISP called G.Networks was aiming to roll-out a Gigabit Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to serve small businesses (SMEs) in central London. The provider has now secured £4.6m from Albion Capital to support their ambition.

A report on Startups claims that G.Networks recently completed a crucial audit, which identified 200 streets (prioritising those with “significant business density“) where they could install their new fibre optic network and they hope to connect another 70 streets by the end of 2017.

Sasho Veselinski and David Sangster, G.Network co-Founders, said:

“As we continue to build a loyal and committed customer base throughout Central London, we’re ambitious about our objective to provide small businesses with affordable, ultrafast fibre broadband without the inefficiencies of legacy networks.

This investment from Albion Capital, alongside its team’s exceptional record in supporting growth companies, will enable us to deliver our market-leading service to more potential clients, at a faster rate.”

At present we still know very little about the ISP, although a recent application for Code Powers from Ofcom revealed that they intend to make use of Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts and telegraph poles in the “last mile” via the Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product (i.e. installing their own cables in BT’s ducts).

At the time G.Networks said they would initially focus their deployments around the borough of Westminster and the City of London areas due to their “high concentration of SMEs, the burgeoning demand for high speed internet access and comparative lake of prompt FTTP connection.”

The ISP’s website claims that their “unlimited” fibre packages will be priced from £85 +vat a month with no connection fee for a symmetric 20Mbps service on a 12 month contract, while Leased Line pricing starts from £350 for a dedicated 50Mbps connection.