UK ISP Origin Broadband Boosted by £2m Private Investment
Calculus Capital, which specialises in Enterprise Investment Schemes and Venture Capital Trusts, has made a second investment of £2 million into Doncaster-based ISP Origin Broadband. The new money will be used to help grow the business (i.e. attracting more customers and adding extra UK staff).
The same Private Equity fund put £3 million into Origin at the end of December 2016 (here) and since then the ISP claims to have been “extremely successful” at acquiring new residential customers, surpassing its projected numbers by more than 300%. The company has also increased its headcount by over 100% since December (no solid base figures have been provided to give this context).
Oliver Bryssau, Managing Director of Origin, said:
“We continue to work closely with Calculus Capital who are helping us to reach our growth ambitions. We are using this funding to invest heavily in providing UK based jobs and in turn focusing on providing the best service to our broadband customers at a great price.”
Richard Moore, Head of New Investments at Calculus Capital, said:
“We are pleased to be supporting Origin in this latest round of fundraising. The company has achieved significant growth since our last investment, particularly in the residential market. This second round of funding will enable to Origin to support its enlarged customer base and focus on growing the SME (leased line) side of the business.”
One downside of Origin’s rapid expansion appears to be that the level of customer gripes about the service have also increased, which is something that we’ve noticed quite a bit since the start of this year. Hopefully the extra investment will be used to tackle some of those weaker points so that quality isn’t sacrificed too much for the sake of growth.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I’d be giving them a wide berth personally – the reviews on ISPreview and Trustpilot are not great:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/799.html
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/originbroadband.com
Yeah they’re pretty bad
i signed up
then canceled and they wouldn’t let me i had to say i was moving out of the country for them to cancel my order
then they said they would refund me my initial charge
up to 2 weeks later
i got 4 months later.
after my dealings i can only agree with you there cheap for a reason it’s a bad reason
Looking at the figures, I suggest that they don’t add staff/people but do add customers – they will hemorrhage cash for a while yet and I am glad I am not Yorkshire Finance – as cash burn is way too high to be sustainable.
My brother has their service and it’s appalling
They really are not great, in the 2 years I was with them the FTTC was fine, the support was a complete joke and the errors they made were that bad they were comical.
their representatives told whopping lies and made frequent errors, I look back and laugh now, glad I am no longer contracted.
Roy
Bet it doesn’t improve as the speed was absolute joke and wernt very helpful I’m not blaming these for the speed its the so called cowboys of openreach and the superslow fibre ripoff Britain
Looks like they will be spending that £ 2 million on ombudsmen fees the way its going, was with them and customer service is appalling,speed worse than dial up, wait hours on the phone, no reply to emails, never get billing right, never phone you back when promised,can’t believe how bad they are,should be closed down until they sort there problems out,forget catching new customers look after the ones they have first.
Origin broadband is all round BAD. From line speed to customer service also taking unauthorised monies from customers accounts mine included! check out the ever growing complaints on their facebook page.
Big mistake if you opt for Origin.
I’ve been with a few different ISP’s over the years and Origin are by far the worse.
I pay for 76mb fibre broadband. I’ve just submitted them a reading of 0.5mb on the download and 1.3mb on the upload, mind you that was quite fast – it’s been as low as 0.13mb download speed.
This has been going on since I had the line and I’ve spent countless hours on the phone, talking of which I’ve now been waiting for over an hour.
This is how an Origin Broadband customer spends their evening.