Broadband ISP Giganet, which is spending £250m to build a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 300,000 premises across the South of England (here), has today opened a new training centre in the Whiteley area of Hampshire (England) to help “unlock gigabit-capable full fibre broadband across the UK“.
At present a lot of network builders, like Giganet, are competing to recruit full fibre installation engineers when there are simply not enough skilled and qualified people to meet demand. So starting in July 2022, Giganet will recruit, train and equip their own engineers, who will then be able to work in their local area connecting homes and businesses (they’re most active across poorly served parts of Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and West Sussex).
Boasting a fully recreated home installation environment, the new development is part of a wider strategy to educate all staff on the work they are carrying out. Giganet has so far expanded from 25 to over 130 employees, with future hiring plans that will take them up to 200 staff members by the end of 2022, including a new apprenticeship program set to be launched later this year.
Jarlath Finnegan, Giganet CEO, said:
“To create a dedicated space to train people in our business is invaluable. Our mission is to become the Best ISP in the UK, and to do that we have to be utterly confident that we’re providing the best service possible. The Training Centre is essential to our apprenticeship program and future hiring plans to give our staff a comprehensive understanding of the equipment we’re installing and the gigabit capability it provides – helping every employee, regardless of department or role, to understand the business and customer better.”
Further details can be found here – https://www.giganet.uk/training-centre/ .
How long before Fern’s full fibre brands combine? Their network footprints aren’t particularly significant on their own but they’re somewhat more substantial once combined. I note that Fern appears to simply be a brand of Octopus Investments — perhaps we’ll see Octopus Broadband to come alongside Octopus Energy some time in the future?
It’s certainly a very plausible probability, although right now there’s somewhat of a shadow over how much build progress has actually been made by Fern’s operators. I haven’t had a solid progress update from any of them since November 2020 (I’ll exclude Giganet from this, as they’ve only recently begun to build). Operator’s often like to advertise it when things are going to plan, thus silence has the opposite connotation.