G.Network Top 400,000 Full Fibre Premises in London as CEO Exits
Sasho Veselinski, the CEO and Co-founder of UK gigabit-broadband builder and ISP G.Network, has decided to step down from the business for personal reasons. The provider is currently investing £1bn to deploy a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across London and beyond (here).
The announcement notes that the network has now covered over 400,000 premises in the capital city (up sharply from 300k in Jan 2022), and their longer-term aim is to reach 1.4 million by around the end of 2026. G.Network’s principal backers are the Universities Superannuation Scheme and Cube Infrastructure Managers.
In 6 short years, G.Network has also grown to employing over 800 people. The company’s other co-founder and current COO, David Sangster, will now take over as interim CEO until a permanent successor is appointed.
Sasho Veselinski said:
“With regret I have decided to step down as G.Network’s CEO for personal reasons. It has been my honour to be part the G.Network journey and I am immensely proud of what the company has achieved in such a short time. The G.Network project, which I conceived 6 years ago, is delivering a significant infrastructure upgrade for London and will provide future proofed full fibre connectivity to Londoners for many years to come.
I would like to thank our shareholders, our partners, our customers and above all my colleagues throughout the company for the tremendous support they have given me over the 6 years.”
Customers of the new network tend to pay from £22 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (50Mbps upload) package, which includes a free connection and wireless router. Prices then go up to £48 per month for their top symmetric speed 900Mbps (gigabit) package. Anybody taking a 24-month term will also currently benefit from a 6-month free service discount.
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 and Linkedin.
« Broadway Partners Become One of the First Carbon Neutral UK ISPs
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (5530)
- BT (3518)
- Politics (2542)
- Openreach (2298)
- Business (2266)
- Building Digital UK (2247)
- FTTC (2045)
- Mobile Broadband (1977)
- Statistics (1790)
- 4G (1668)
- Virgin Media (1621)
- Ofcom Regulation (1465)
- Fibre Optic (1396)
- Wireless Internet (1391)
- FTTH (1382)
G.Network seem to be increasing their coverage at the rate of about 100,000 every 6 months which seems consistent with their intention to reach 1.4m by the end of 2026.
However, they risk losing momentum with overpromising – for instance, a year ago they announced they were building in Wandsworth but I don’t believe they are live anywhere in the borough yet.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/05/london-isp-g-network-invest-gbp105m-in-wandsworth-fttp-rollout.html
https://wandsworth.gov.uk/news/2021-news/news-may-2021/battersea-chosen-for-launch-of-borough-s-full-fibre-ultrafast-internet-rollout/
@Sunil Sood they will be beaten by Openreach who are rolling out aggressively in Wandsworth now.
@Gigabit
Agreed – though the area that G.Network announced they were starting in is on the Battersea exchange which OR haven’t yet added to their rollout but it can’t be long until they do.
The odd thing is that one.network showed them doing work in the area ages ago so very surprising they haven’t gone live
The numbers are fudged, Community Fibre has much more coverage and is only at 500m. You can make the comparison in thinkbroadband maps
Hard to say for sure yet, as there’s normally a fair time lag to find all the bits of new build (TBB is usually a few short months behind the latest live state) – particularly when operators rapidly ramp up their build. G.Network also seem more tightly focused on densification of build street-by-street, while CF is more widely distributed and spent their early years being more MDU focused.
Previously they were targeting 1.4M prems by 2025 and now its slipped to 2026?
Are they using Openreach ducts, or are they still building their own?
G.Network is the only provider in london that is digging the streets to provide service, there is of course a small part that usesOR ducts but this is not to connect to the customer
I really wonder what their customer numbers are. I see a lot of G.Network Toby boxes or aerial node on London streets, but yet to see one with a live connection. The ones in central London which I imagine contribute an awful lot of their homes passed are usually a long way from the buildings they nominally serve.
there are currently no aerial nodes for G.Network as that requires OR poles. You would need to open each toby to see if there is a connection.
Have walked down streets in Fulham with their aerial nodes deployed and labelled so clearly they are using PIA. You also don’t need to open a Toby to see a connection. Most In central London are too far from the property be a carried out without a visible scar on the footway. Where they are up against the boundary you can see a drop wire, and again don’t see many.
AFN, or aerial fibre nodes in the context of Pole routes, ie via Open reach in not a deployment method currently used by G.N, maybe double check you are looking at the poles ie DPA.
The topy boxes are located as close to the property as possible. the scar would be from the toby to the main route in the main, as a lot of building in london have basements hence why you might think you see the toby no where near the boundary. so in a lot of cases you would not see a scar from the toby to the building as it is drilled into the basement.
I really cannot understand this company and the need to dig up the entire road to lay their fibre.
Awful disruption and damage to the roads in our area. Great waste of time and money when most of the residents already have fast broadband, cheaper and without the G3 disruption being experienced to the road network
Think of it like the water or gas coming into your home. It wouldn’t be possible to provide you with either without the pipes physically connecting you, correct? Now think that people want / need more “water or gas than was possible before, you would have to increase the pressure of the supply and install bigger pipes to facilitate that.
It is pretty much the same with fibreoptics. In this case, there just isn’t a fibre (pipe). A fibre (pipe can carry massively more data than the existing electrical connections, which unfortunately struggle to be able to provide what people now want / need from their internet connection.
Yes it is unfortunate that the road has to be dug up to lay these new cables, but it is necessary.
It is REALLY necessary in the UK and London as the UK has for various reasons historically made a bit of a mess of doing this (let’s not get into politics haha), so UK is far behind many countries, including some countries which might be classed as poorer and less developed than the UK.
It might be that you are one of the people who don’t use the internet very much – nothing wrong with that, but the majority of people do and will only be using it more and more, hence the need to upgrade to something that (along with IP V6) is future proofing.
I hope this helps 🙂
G.Network and Wandsworth Council promised to installed full fibre in Battersea 2 years ago. Prime areas, most characteristic and representative of Battersea like Battersea Church Road, continue waiting for years, and without a similar full fibre alternative. Best example is SW11 3NA, SW11 3BZ, SW11 3AG, SW11 3TP.