New AltNet ISP Giggle Aim to Build Gigabit Fibre Across Glasgow UPDATE
Starting a new alternative network provider in today’s overly crowded UK broadband market carries a lot of risk, yet that hasn’t deterred new player Giggle from establishing itself alongside a £100m investment plan to build a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the city of Glasgow in Scotland.
At present, Giggle (aka – Giggle Broadband and Giggle Fibre) is still in the early phases of establishing itself, after formally becoming a registered Scottish company in early August 2022 (SC740070). The provider, which seems to have three Directors (most with experience in the fibre industry), states that they’re being backed by Triple Point‘s Digital 9 Infrastructure (DI9) fund and their experienced CEO is Dave Axam.
The build plan is due to start in early 2023 (the first live network tests are planned for the spring) and spans across the city over the next 3 years (by spring 2026), focusing first on Social Housing. After a bit of digging, we found the LinkedIn profile for the company’s Director of Fibre Build, Greg Fleming (a familiar name – having held various senior engineering roles at Openreach), which revealed a little bit more information.
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According to Greg’s profile, the build plan will span over 300,000 premises across Glasgow and their total investment in the city “will be close to” £100 million. “We will be directly employing up to 180 people to support our customers and network, with the majority in Glasgow. We will also have over 150 indirect employees building our network, again predominately in region,” said Greg.
All of this sounds like great news for Glasgow, but it should be said that Giggle will face a lot of competition from gigabit-capable rivals in the city. Both Virgin Media and Openreach already have extensive coverage of the city, while Cityfibre and Hyperoptic have both covered a significant number of premises and continue to grow. Some smaller FTTP deployments also exist from OFNL and FibreNest in a few new build homes. We should add that Netomnia are also building just outside of Glasgow, albeit without entering the central areas.
Suffice to say that Glasgow is an interesting place for a start-up AltNet like Giggle to set-up shop, given that it seems likely to face such an uphill battle to penetrate into an already aggressively competitive area. Nevertheless, the provider clearly has both a good team and enough investment, which makes them one to watch over the next couple of years. Credits to one of our readers (Kevin) for spotting the new player.
UPDATE 6th Feb 2023
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The operator has now made a request for Code Powers from Ofcom (here), albeit seemingly under their Scottish company name – Giggle Broadband Limited (here). The request also states they have “plans for an initial project in Glasgow to deploy a fibre network to 100,000 premises, which are predominately run by local housing associations” (sounds like Phase One of their build).
Such powers are typically sought to help speed-up deployments of new fibre optic infrastructure and cut costs, not least by reducing the number of licenses needed for street works. It can also be used to facilitate access to run their own fibre via Openreach’s existing ducts and telegraph poles (PIA).
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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Inb4 “ex telecom engineer” says nobody needs gigabit
And ad47uk harps on about how 36mb/s fttc is enough for him and nobody else could possibly need more
@Anon, show me where I have ever said nobody else could possibly need more than 36Mb/s? I have always said that some people may need faster speeds, not sure if very many people would need 1Gb/s mind you, but i suppose some may
At least i don’t hide behind a name that could be anyone, so you are talking BS
@Ad47uk how is anyone supposed to know who you are by the name “Ad47uk”? That doesn’t tell anyone anything about your identity.
If it’s so bad being Anon, why don’t you tell us your full name?
You know what I mean, in that I use the same name across different forums and keep the same name on here. I am not going to use my full name on here.
did not answer the fact that Anon is incorrect in saying that i think36Mb/s is fast enough for everyone.
Madness, see e.g. https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#11/55.7955/-4.1618/altfttp/geafttp/
Altnets should focus on areas which make commercial sense, and where there is no competition (yet). There are plenty of densely built-up small towns with no fibre yet, where fibre could be easily installed, with the prospect of a much higher takeup rate.
A lot of altnets are doing that already, but it can take 1-2 years of planning before you actually firm up the details, secure the funding and can announce a build. By that time, several of the other networks may have announced a build for the same location or follow your announcement with their own. At that point it becomes a race, a race to out-build and a race to grab take-up before your rivals.
None of this is simple in a market where both Virgin Media and Openreach each intend to reach around 80% of premises and there are 100+ AltNets now operating. Every plan or location you can think to target, is probably going to be the same aim as somebody else.
@GNewton, you forgot Virgin…. https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#11/55.7955/-4.1618/altfttp/geafttp/virgin/
Really where do you suggest then
Where then gnewton would you suggest they build
They are few and far between now
@Fastman: Are you living in a fantasy world? Just take a look at the thinkbroadband maps for a start.
Strange – the UK fibre market is so saturated now, this looks like a very risky and capex intensive project. There are already a number of big fibre providers operating in the area. Overbuild at its worst ..
Not everywhere though. Netomnia have overbuilt on top of OR and VM in my town – but wont touch my street as it’s DiG. No OR or VM so FTTC or nothing for now.
I’d love a utopia of the UK having been split up into logical geographic blocks that include outlying regions that companies have to abide to. Want to provide services to this really lucrative central area which is going to get loads of overbuild? No problem but you ALSO have to provide it to this not so lucrative part too. Stop the cherry picking and force multiple providers to cover everyone. No I don’t care that margins are lower or profits are lower.
@DaveIsRight They tried that with the original cable franchise areas. It didn’t work. Eventually the coverage obligations had to be removed to prevent the cable companies from going bankrupt en masse trying to meet them.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Some places may be able to cope with it, I don’t think I live will be able to cope with more than the two we have, Zzoomm and openreach and I think even just two is pushing it. But i hope i am wrong