Network operator and UK ISP LightSpeed Broadband, which is busy rolling out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the East of England, has today announced the appointment of Brett Shepherd as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
The operator currently aims to cover an initial 200,000 premises across the East of England region by the end of 2022, although they also hold a longer-term ambition to reach 1 million premises by the end of 2025. At the last update in March 2022 we were informed that they’d so far managed to cover 30,000 premises and were in the process of ramping-up (they only started their deployment in April 2021).
As it stands the operator is already providing service to residents of Boston, Bourne, Spalding, Stamford, Market Deeping, and King’s Lynn. On top of that, a further 26 towns, with tens of thousands of additional homes, are currently scheduled to be ready for service this autumn. Most of this is across parts of Essex, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk in England.
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In terms of funding, the provider’s original £55m investment came from AtmosClear Investments, Kompass Kapital and Thesaurium, which was recently boosted by £60m from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (here). We should point out that their original investment also included the “opportunity” to raise their funding up to £300 million as work progresses (here).
However, it’s not unusual for big funding announcements to be followed by changes in senior management further down the road, which is where Brett Shepherd comes in as their new CEO. Brett has more than 12 years in senior positions at network infrastructure and telecoms businesses, having previously been the MD of LilaConnect (VXFIBER) and the COO of Gigaclear – both alternative UK networks with a similar focus.
Brett Shepherd, CEO of LightSpeed Broadband, said:
“I am absolutely delighted to be joining LightSpeed. I’ve been impressed with the company’s achievements to date and it’s an exciting opportunity to work with a great team to bring the latest full-fibre technology to more homes and businesses across the region, including previously underserved rural areas.
LightSpeed deliver the whole package to the market; future-proof technology with market leading sustainability and energy efficiency standards, backed up with excellent customer support, a clear and simple product offering and competitive pricing. I believe we bring the gold standard of full fibre to our customers and I can’t wait to get started.”
New customers will typically pay £39.95 per month on a 24-month term in order to access their 1000Mbps symmetric speed broadband package, which includes a Wi-Fi 6 wireless router and no in contract price rises. A £30 one-off setup fee is applicable.
“Boston, Bourne, Spalding, Stamford, Market Deeping, and King’s Lynn.”
Only half of these locations are showing on TBB, is this accurate?
I am connected in King’s Lynn so TBB must be a little behind
“At the last update in March 2022 we were informed that they’d so far managed to cover 30,000 premises”
It’s a big difference because judging by what’s on TBB it definitely shows less than 1/3 announced
Do remember that TBB needs time to conduct proper surveys to confirm live areas for each operator, so they don’t instantly reflect the complete picture as it may stand today. I usually allow 2-3 months for catch-up and that’s important, since new altnets can easily add thousands of extra premises in that time (i.e. by the time you’ve caught up, you have to start again).
On top of that, there’s also of course the real possibility that some operators may consider some areas as technically RFS before customers can actually place an order. This is an issue we’ve seen a lot, such as with some of CityFibre’s areas.
@Mark as per your article “March 30k” and as you now said “allow 2-3 months”. We’re now in the middle of August (so 5 months)
I remember the time a few years ago when Hyperoptic announced they had reached 500k homes when in reality they only had roughly half the number.
“Technically RFS”, “almost RFS”, “cable is in same street RFS”, “my cable is within 1km of property RFS”, etc are not actual RFS where the average Joe can get service. Using these kinds of terminologies is misleading people even if not done in bad faith. City Fibre can trick their investors as much as they want but you being the main media for the industry should not be falling for the same problems that plague most legacy media of taking whatever state entity or big company’s statements at face value and presenting them as facts
Still nothing for Skegness at my address even though the work was done in March at the current g.fast cab site – Was told I might be surprised in the first quarter of the year – still disappointed in the second or third.
Have seen lots of comments about customers who are in areas that they are rolling out to who are waiting very long periods for them to progress so they can actually order a product.
@Angry Man: That’s because often they are unable to implement a proper rollout plan. In that sense it’s no different from BT Openreach claiming to cover premises between now and 2026. We see too many half-baked schemes here, lacking a professional approach, and often accompanied by poor customer services.
@Angry Man: Is that you Anon 😉
Lightspeed Broadband uses a somewhat misleading availability checker. Simply stating that a certain address is in a planned town and that they are therefore working on it doesn’t cut it.
More often than not they are not even able to provide a proper rollout plan for a given location. This will make it impossible for potential future customers to do appropriate planning for their future broadband needs and will cause many to use other providers instead.
It’s highly unlikely Lightspeed will even come close to its 200,000 target of reachable premises by the end of 2022. For this, you’d need a professional rollout plan, not the current adhoc approaches.
Gnewton you have surpassed yourself this time you really have no clue about anything do you !!!!!
the checker works though a number of stages as build commences
more disinformation as ever !!!!!
@Fastman: So have you ever contacted Lightspeed Broadband then on this? We have. For many locations they are not able to provide a rollout plan.
Or have you even checked their Facebook pages with their user comments? Just because the availability checker claims they are working on it for a certain location doesn’t mean much. No more so than Openreach’s claim to cover a location between 2022 and 2026.
This will cause many potential customers to look elsewhere for a provider. Chances are that even Openreach or other altnets will be there before Lightspeed implements its fibre network.
Gnewton lightspeed area is quite defined and is based on town areas and from memory your not in a lightspeed area if your still in haughley . Which is not formally part of any announced town or central to that town
From.memery you have fttp from openreach under bduk so it’s highly unlikely ant operator would be overbuilding that and if they were yould be the first person to be in angst over it
@Fastman: You clearly haven’t properly read the posts here! We stated that Lightspeed wasn’t able to provide specific rollout plans for their announced towns and that their availability checker is somewhat misleading on this. Backed up by our own enquiries and other people’s experiences with them. Potential customers need to be able to make informed decisions for future broadband needs, something which is not always possible with Lightspeed (nor with Openreach-based rollouts).
no CP will provide you a specific roll out plan for announced towns as these are all subject to change FTTP means you have to deal with the nuances of individual feeds and these change as builds progress ie whats direct in ground , whats an MDU (is ut UG or OH fed) , what might be joint user poles , what not quite as the PIA data suggests it is (all things that determine what deliverable or not it proves a real lack of understanding of how complex and bespoke a FTTP network build is
@Fastman: No offense, but yours sounds like a lame excuse.
The telecoms industry, especially BT/Openreach, still have this inherent Can’t Do culture from a past GPO era. It’s bad enough when Openreach doesn’t even know the state of its own infrastructure, resulting in problems with PIA. A proper project management should always include contingency plans, doing an announcement for covering a certain location with barely any planning just doesn’t cut it.
Lightspeed Broadband is just one example where project management and rollout plans have to be improved, there are countless other telecoms with similar issues, such as Openreach etc.
There is a reason why this country is more than a decade behind of where it should be with regards to fibre broadband availability.
They went live today in Skegness and other areas and are offering 6 months free. 1GB is £39,95 a month on 24 months or £44,95 on 12 months
About time. It appears to be only certain areas at the moment though. I’m still getting “We’re working on it!” I was hoping to take advantage of the 6 months free broadband offer with activation. Shouldn’t be long now! Fingers crossed before 16th September. :/
Just rechecked using Lightspeed’s availability checker and my address now says “Lightspeed is not planned to be available at XXXXXX”.
Yet another provider just looking at the easy/high population density roll outs rather than including rural villages.
I wouldn’t mind, but I’m between Spalding and Boston ~8 miles from Lightspeed’s headquarters 🙁