Lightning Fibre Appoint New Board Members to Support UK FTTP Build
Alternative UK network ISP Lightning Fibre, which aims to cover over 100,000 premises across parts of East Sussex with their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband infrastructure, has today announced the appointment of two senior telecommunications and infrastructure executives to its Board.
The operator, which is being backed by private equity firm Foresight (here), first began their build in 2019 and is currently focused on deploying across the Eastbourne and Hastings areas (here). More recently they’ve opened a new facility to help train-up local fibre engineers and also appointed Michael Postle to the role of Chief Finance Officer (CFO).
The latest change sees the addition of two new Board members – Amit Thakrar, Portfolio Director at Foresight Group, and Tim Passingham, Chairman of Cambridge Management Consulting. They join fellow Board members, Founder and CEO of Lightning Fibre, Ben Ferriman and Simon Bonini, non-executive director.
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Amit Thakrar started his career as a chartered accountant, before moving into investment in infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, Tim Passingham is the founder and chairman of Cambridge Management Consulting and spent his executive career in telecommunications at BT, Level3 Communications (now Lumens) and Colt. Tim is also the chairman of the pollution reduction technology business Iknaia, co-founder and non-executive director of sustainability consultancy Edenseven, and a non-executive director of The Carrier Club.
Ben Ferriman, Founder and CEO of Lightning Fibre, said:
“These board level appointments come at a time when the contribution of alt-nets to the development of Gigabit Britain is being widely recognised. Tim and Amit bring substantial infrastructure and telecoms experience and, along with Simon Bonini, they will play a vital role in the further expansion and development of the South Coast’s fixed telecoms sector.”
We haven’t had much in the way of solid build updates from the operator for a while, although they’ve already created around 100 local jobs and plan to double this at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Residential customers of the service pay from £29 per month for a symmetric speed 100Mbps package on a 24-month term (plus £100 one-off for the setup), which rises to £59 for their top 900Mbps package with free setup.
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 X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
Foresight own the firm and if they are going to make a return they are going to have to get a grip. Lightning are up against Cityfibre, and Trooli in their build areas. Both of which seem to have more clue. With Openreach not far behind.
Indeed, it does sadly feel as if Lightning Fibre’s rollout is slower here compared to Cityfibre (which has been available for quite some time). It might just be where I am though.
I’m hoping that ‘seaside’ (well, presumably the cabinet behind ‘The Beacon’) area gets the green light in the next few weeks. I was told a few months ago that it was expected to be live I guess around now. I read on their Twitter feed they recently said that testing for ‘seaside’ is being finalized next week (which is now this week). The civil works outside were finished last year.
I’ll be glad when I can finally get their service and subsequently cancel the high cost monthly contract I’m on with another ISP.