Vorboss Unveil New London-wide Fibre Network for Businesses

Network builder and UK ISP Vorboss, which is part of the Fern Trading Group, has today hailed the progress they’ve made on their £250m project to build “London’s only full-coverage fibre network dedicated to business“, which has installed over 500km of fibre optic cable in the UK’s capital city since 2020.

We first reported on Vorboss’ plan to deploy their own network in 2019 and at that time they held an aspiration to deploy their business focused full fibre broadband platform to cover 250,000 premises in large UK urban areas (here), starting with Central London. The plan was given a significant boost last year, after investment group Fern Trading acquired the operator (here).

The operator is now investing £250m to turn their ambition into a reality and, as part of that, they’ve made a commitment to “cover all commercial buildings” in Central London. Vorboss said that their new network delivers speeds of 10Gbps as the new minimum standard, with services at 100Gbps “already live with customers” – this includes 22 Bishopsgate, Britain’s largest office building.

The Vorboss service is said to have helped 22 Bishopsgate secure a WiredScore Platinum connectivity certificate, the highest possible stamp of approval. As a result of all this work, the provider has also created over 300 new jobs for Londoners in just the last 18 months. Much like other alternative network (AltNet) providers, Vorboss are reducing their build costs by running new fibre through existing infrastructure (e.g. cable ducts).

Tim Creswick, Vorboss Founder and CEO, said:

“Internet connectivity has become the single most important utility for most businesses. Our network is designed for one purpose: provide the capacity that London needs. In a market where most businesses are still connected at 1 Gbps or less, we’re proud to be providing 10 Gbps as a minimum, effectively removing bandwidth constraints for our customers. We own our network end to end and sell directly to our customers, which allows us to bypass the resellers that provide access to the Openreach network.

London generates a GDP of over £500 billion; yet, many businesses remain at the mercy of restrictive telecommunications products and business models. These legacy networks are a limiting factor in critical technology decisions, which can restrict growth. Our network is unrivalled in both scale and quality, and our sole focus is enabling business growth.”

The announcement also includes an update on their new training and recruitment initiative – The Vorboss Academy – that was setup in March 2021 to help train new engineers and others with telecoms skills. At the time, the provider said that this gave them the capacity to train up over 150 key workers in 2021.

According to today’s announcement, nearly 200 people have graduated from their academy over the past 18-months. The provider also claims to have the “most diverse fibre installation team in the industry“, with nearly 40% of their field-based installation teams being women.

The only thing missing from today’s announcement is a bit more detail on their network coverage / rollout plan and a clear timescale for achieving their primary goals.