Clarification: Jurassic Fibre’s 2,500 Live Full Fibre Premises Claim
Exeter-based broadband ISP Jurassic Fibre, which is rolling out a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the South West of England (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset), recently stated via social media that they now have a total of 2,500 live homes and businesses on their service. But this is incorrect.
The operator itself is currently being supported by an investment of £250m from Fern Trading, which is fuelling their ambition to cover 500,000 premises across the region by the end of 2025 (covering 30 towns and villages). The latest data from the end of June claimed that they’d so far managed to complete coverage to 100,000 premises (across 21 towns and villages), which is up sharply from the 75,000 reported in March 2022.
However, until now, we haven’t had an updated customer figure, but that appeared to change this week. “Our network of ultrafast full-fibre broadband is rapidly expanding, and we are live at over 2,500 homes and businesses,” said JF via Twitter (Credits to Dave for spotting).
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The above figure, if it did represent customers, would be just 2.5% of their 100,000 premises passed, but it’s still far too early to effectively judge this, as JF appears to now be entering into the rapid ramping-up phase of build after a slow start. During this rapid phase, the pace of new build will usually suppress the take-up figure and keep it held low.
A better way to measure take-up is to only look back at locations where the network has been present for 2-3 years, at which point we’d hope to see an operator going above the 20% mark (organic growth takes time) – unless a deployment is demand-led as those builds can generate much stronger early take-up. But we rarely get this kind of separation in the data released by operators.
On the other hand, when Netomnia (YouFibre) hit around 100,000 premises passed and was entering a similarly rapid build phase, then they had already hit about 5,000 customers. But Netomnia tends to target more urban towns and cities, where it’s often quicker to roll out and there’s a bigger pool of customers who can be put within reach of the network within a shorter space of time.
Admittedly, some operators do manage to buck the usual take-up trends. We’ve already given the example above of demand-led builds, but another way to deliver stronger take-up is by ensuring very good local awareness and consumer familiarity via support from major broadband ISP brands. The latter partly helps to explain why Openreach’s rapid FTTP rollout is able to achieve a take-up rate of around 26% and rising, which is despite the pace of their build continuing to increase with every passing quarter.
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Finally, we don’t often get customer figures from alternative networks (AltNets) like JF, so it’s a useful gauge to watch and helps to give context for other operators that might be adopting a similar approach. We suspect some will be in a weaker position than those we’ve covered above. The big question mark is around how many AltNets will achieve a strong enough balance of build and take-up in order to ensure that their investors keep the faith.
At present, there are over 100 AltNets playing in these waters and more overbuild between rivals is expected, thus the prospect for wide market consolidation will only grow over the next couple of years. However, anybody expecting that this group will be whittled down to just 4-5 major operators in a few short years may be quite wide of the mark, we’d expect a more than that to survive the decade. But consolidation isn’t only driven by weakness, it can also occur between strong players.
UPDATE 2:45pm
Jurassic Fibre has informed us that the figure of 2,500 actually refers to the number of premises passed in and around the locations depicted by emojis so far (the original tweet also asked readers to guess the Devon towns based on a series of three emojis), which in this case is Bideford and the immediate surrounding areas. But this key piece of context was absent from the Tweet and JF does not plan to release their current customer figures.
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https://twitter.com/jurassicfibre/status/1557427084368257025
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.
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JF messed up. They should have had their current pricing from the start. Now potential customers are locked into 1-2 year contracts with other providers.
Alas that is the least of the problems with them – they had a lot of promise but they executed everything badly, they’re terribly run (I wonder if the change of top brass is part of some realisation of this?). So many things I’d like to be able to say but I can’t alas, but I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone…
Looking at ThinkBroadband a lot of JFs build has also been built by Openreach, there are some exceptions like Sidmouth but most of the build is covered by Openreach. With their old pricing why would anyone go with JF? Now the prices have been dropped to be lower than Openreach providers they might get some customers.
If they only managed 2500 when they had near 0 competition for full fibre in some of their biggest areas, they’re effectively dead in the water with the rapid rollout of full fibre in the likes of Bridgwater and Taunton.
As I said above, it’s still too early to judge. The picture, across the whole market, will become clearer in another year or so, when we’ll get a better idea of how different operators are doing in take-up vs build terms.
Right now, most of the newer altnets have been through the initial deployment / finding their feet phase and are just entering the rapid ramp phase, so these are figures that will increase in very short spaces of time.
We’ve seen some Altnets doubling their bases every few months.
The problem lies in the fact that when a new operator opens up, customers need to wait for their current contract terms to terminate and often these are for 12-24 months. Jurassic Fibre will be a new provider, whereas existing customers of BT can trade up to the full fibre service without facing an exit penalty for moving ISP. Therefore, BT’s figures will always look better than a new entrant. As MJ says, give it 2-3 years and with competitive pricing we’ll see how they fare. BT’s current offering looks very expensive compared to others.
The problem for many Altnets is that they aren’t competing against BT, or Openreach, they’re competing against all the CP’s who use the Openreach network. Most customers are happy with their superfast FTTC service, and many CP’s will undercut Altnet providers to keep hold of all, but the most enthustiastic FTTP aware potential Altnet customers. The Altnets are fighting an uphill battle against some big CP’s, like Sky, who’ll do good deals to retain customers at the end of their contracts.
CityFibre is scaling up and targetting the wholesale market, but this is also a risky strategy. PSTN switch off, and the Openreach FTTP rollout, will reduce BT/Openreach’s operating costs massively over the next 6 years, probably ensuring that BT/Openreach will have the best profit margins due their scale, explaining why CityFibre are racing to get first mover advantage in non Openreach FTTP locations. The media narrative about BT’s debt and Pension deficit being a problem, is a false one in my opinion and wont affect BT/Openreach’s ability to compete on pricing in years to come.
I assume you have shares in BT given your posting history, its not subtle.
“I assume you have shares in BT given your posting history, its not subtle.”
I am a BT shareholder, and as such I’ve followed all of BT’s earnings projections and future plans. I wouldn’t post my views if I didn’t believe BT have it right as far as their cost cutting plans are concerned:
Pension Deficit decreasing, eventually leading to an insurance buyout by the trustees.
£2.5Billion annual cost savings by the end of 2025
A third of the current debt is lease liabilities, which will decrease with the Exchange closure program. BT will also receive a cut of the profits from Telereal Trillium as Exchanges are repurposed and sold.
Much lower operating costs from PSTN/Copper retirement, and full convergence, requiring less workforce and much lower power requirements.
That’s all off the top of my head, I’m sure I could think of more if I decided to think for longer. Even though I’ve a vested interest in BT doing well, it doesn’t mean anything I’ve said is wrong. I really do believe BT’s competition have their work cut out for them, otherwise I wouldn’t have invested in BT.
Curious how CPs will undercut altnets given the pricing they receive from Openreach is regulated and that most ISPs don’t purchase direct from Openreach but via a third party, paying margins to them on top of Openreach.
If those on Openreach’s network, especially via BT Wholesale or TTB, are able to routinely undercut alternative networks Ofcom will step in.
I have received a retention offer from a company that was barely higher than their cost to provision the service. Still didn’t match their CityFibre pricing and that’s with them probably losing money on the deal. If we’re in a situation where companies building their own infrastructure within regulated products and enjoying full vertical integration are unable to match the customer price of leasing lines from Openreach let alone that on top of BT Wholesale products our market is failing and needs work.
These are very bad numbers.
Their Trustpilot score is great, 4.5 out of 5 with 382 reviews submitted. I know that Openreach employees in the area are a bit miffed at their network rollout because it’s caused problems with Openreach, but on the customer side it’s clear people like the product and service.
Not impressed with Jurassic they can’t give me a fixed IP and there is no access to the router configuration to do any port forwarding, luckily it’s a 30 day contract so have cancelled already. Took 4 engineers half a day to do a dismal install left wires hanging and cable ties unfinished. Not impressed.
to get round the access to router just get it set in bridge mode and use your own router. That’s my plan
I’ve had JF since last year. They can provide a static IP address for home users. I asked and they did that for me.
Have their router in bridge mode so I can use my own.
All works fine, and great install
JF ducting went in a week or so ago, install is next week.
Seems to have sparked a flurry of activity from Openreach laying their own ducting.
Still got 4 months to go on my present 4g contract so will be paying that £15 as well until then but hey ho.
@TauntonTom Whole network is extremely restricted and the quality just not up to expectations. Installation team is amazing. But whole service not the best in my opinion. They don’t even have 24/7 technical support and. I believe they no longer offer give static ip. So pretty much you under cgnat also the completely messed up bridge mode for me. So i went down for 4 days without internet. Anyway everything was fixed. But even speed 450mbps doesn’t stay sometimes it keeps dropping to 250mbps or something. I believe during peak times speed is not consistent. The first FTTP provider after decade in my area. and definitely not the quality you expect or gonna get for expample like in European country like Poland or Lithuania.
Also ping is something like 13 it should be 1 for fibre connection. Not how it should be anyway. Still 13 not too bad. But it should be lower definetly.
Also i forgot to mention speeds is not symmetrical that’s a big shame.
It would be nice. If they offered one package with 1000mbps down and up for £22 then i would give 5 stars. But yeah in your dreams.
Symmetric, 1Gb, static IP … for £22/month. You’re not living in the real world.
Actually he lives in the real world. Many countries give 1000mbps/1000mbps for less than 10 euros in most countries.
List the ISPs, packages, and countries. There will be lots of them since you claim “many countries” offer that for less than 10 euros. I suspect what we’re going to find is outliers.
The reason Openreach don’t offer all those features at that price is pretty obvious, the rollout is costing them a fortune.
In fact start with the UK, list all the ISPs offering symmetric 1Gb with a static IP for 10 euros or less – it should be easy according to you.
I don’t think that’s correct Steve. Could you specify which ones these are. From my research the only countries to offer broadband at less than $10US (currently equivalent to Euro) are:
India 9.27 $
Sri Lanka 8.96 $
Moldova. 8.94 $
Russia 8.65 $
Turkey 8.23 $
Romania 7.99 $
However, these are for broadband, not gigabit broadband. I think what you are quoting is exceptional and if you believe it to be true could you specify your source?
105. Ukraine 4.57 $