Upp’s UK FTTP Broadband Rollout Not Impacted by Russian Sanctions

Upp, which is working on a £1bn project to deploy a gigabit Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to 1 million premises in the East of England by 2025 (here), has told ISPreview.co.uk that its plans have not been hit by the resignation of several “Russian billionaires” from the Board of investment firm LetterOne.

The £1bn investment, which includes c.£300m in equity and the rest as debt, is supported by LetterOne, as well as Upp’s management team, and the Board of Directors. Upp’s initial build has already begun in several towns across Norfolk and Lincolnshire (e.g. Stamford and Diss) and they’re aiming to cover 50 towns (c.300,000 homes) in the two counties by the end of 2022, before expanding.

However, the involvement of LetterOne in the project did initially raise the odd concern, particularly during the build-up and subsequent invasion of Ukraine. Last year the Conservative MP, Bob Seely, warned of security concerns (here) after it was noted that LetterOne was co-founded by Russian billionaires (oligarchs) Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven.

The former British spy, Christopher Steele, is similarly known to have accused Fridman of having close ties to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, although such claims have been denied and Mikhail also won a High Court libel case against Steele’s company, Orbis, over the accusations (here).

Furthermore, Mikhail – who was born in Ukraine (Lviv) – was at the time only a minority shareholder in LetterOne and there’s no suggestion that he has done anything wrong. Nevertheless, he – like many Russian billionaires – ended up being sanctioned by the European Union on 28th February, and then by the UK on 15th March.

London-based LetterOne has reportedly since frozen out Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven (here), not least by removing their access to the building, wiping their profiles from the website and forbidding them from talking to employees. In addition, German Khan, Alexei Kuzmichev, and Andrei Kosogov – who are not subject to any sanctions – have all stepped down from their positions as it was deemed “the right thing to do“.

All of this activity has raised concerns over the funding for Upp. The good news is that the network operator says their work has not been impacted.

A spokesperson for Upp told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Upp’s main investor is LetterOne which, as a company, is not subject to sanctions, therefore Upp has not been impacted. We are continuing with our plans to bring a much-needed full fibre broadband network to underserved parts of eastern England. Upp is fully funded and, working alongside our industry leading partners, we are accelerating our roll-out.

Our three founders and our chairman, who are all British entrepreneurs, are also investors in the business and they are all fully committed to the vital task of helping level-up the digital divide across a large part of the UK.”

We should point out that Mikhail Fridman, who recently called the sanctions against him both “groundless and unfair“, has been carefully critical of the war. However, the UK-based oligarch also made the point that it can be dangerous to be too outspoken against Putin: “Hundreds of thousands of people are working for us in Russia. And you know, I don’t want to make any comments which potentially could increase their risk because I’m right now here” (here).

The changes at LetterOne mean that Upp can continue their build and without having to worry about those past associations, although this doesn’t change the fact that they’ll need to move at lightning speed in order to reach the next target of 300,000 premises passed by the end of 2022 (extremely challenging given how new they are to the market). Just for comparison, that’s about the same amount as Virgin Media – a much bigger player – added in 2021.

UPDATE 4:50pm

According to the government’s OFSI website, German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev are now subject to sanctions too.