LetterOne Challenges Gov Order to Sell UK Full Fibre Network
The investor behind Upp’s £1bn project to deploy a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across 1 million premises in the East of England by 2025 (here), LetterOne, has launched a legal challenge against the UK Government’s order for L1 to sell its entire stake in Upp in order to “prevent, remedy, or mitigate the risk to national security” (here).
Just to recap. Upp’s initial aim was to cover 50 towns (c.300,000 homes) in counties like Norfolk and Lincolnshire by the end of 2022. But so far we’ve only seen them go live in around 11 towns, such as parts of Diss, Downham Market, Horncastle, King’s Lynn, Market Deeping, Oakham, Spalding, Stamford, Thetford, Wisbech and Woodhall Spa.
However, all of this was thrown into doubt in December 2022, after the Government ordered LetterOne – an investment firm that previously received significant backing from several prominent and now sanctioned Russians – to sell its entire stake in Upp in order to “prevent, remedy, or mitigate the risk to national security” (here).
At the time LetterOne said they “believe that L1 ownership of Upp is not a threat to national security in any way” and pointed out that “L1 is not sanctioned and has taken fast, decisive action to put in place strong measures to distance L1 from its sanctioned shareholders. They have no role in L1, no access to premises, infrastructure, people and funds or benefits of any description.”
The last update that we had in February 2023, which came from Upp’s CEO – Drew Ritchie (here), said: “Discussions regarding the sale of the business are progressing well. In the meantime, it is very much business as usual, and our build is continuing at pace.” But according to the FT (paywall), LetterOne is now formally seeking a Judicial Review of the Government’s decision. The investor argues that its ownership of Upp does not pose a national security risk.
Cases like this tend to take a long time to reach any kind of conclusion and, with respect to Upp itself, it probably doesn’t help that investor appetite to throw cash at alternative full fibre networks has somewhat cooled over the past year.
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.
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Just what this country needs is a FTTP rollout paid for with dirty Russian money….honestly, you couldn’t make it up!
Considering our own government and its party are drowning in dirty Russian money, have installed at least one dirty Russian asset in the House of Lords, and suppressed its own dirty Russian political interference report as it’s too much of an embarrassment even for those shameless omnishambolic disgraces, I fear you’re asking too much!
Yes, yes, defenders of the indefensible, I know I’m a “deranged lefty wefty Britain hater” who should “move abroad” and should “stop talking” our Dear Leaders and their oligarchy… sorry… “the country” down…
Lol. Lmao even. Lefty wefty UK hater is the guy that thinks Labour has no Chinese influences despite one of their MPs getting half a million from some Chinese spy. Lol no tories bad, Labour never ever had any Chinese influence it was all those evil tories I tells ya. Bethe,s also the “world beating” comment guy that every time the UK does anything he has to criticise. Watch my comment self destruct now because only approved lefty posts allowed ( don’t tell me I’m lying, complaints about tories stay up, complaints about Labour get removed)
UK USA Euro money is clean? we’re no angels.
Tsk – tsk all this bickering! Its just not….well, its just not British! This wasn’t how we won the last ‘big show!’ We all need to pull together chaps and show old Johnny Foreigner that Blighty and her government are all united in a common stand against ineptitude.
Now then, all we need do is to convince our elected leaders that the country should – indeed must- come before their self-serving agendas and we’ve got it made. Any volunteers to try?….
My comment get deleted when it was simply talking about uncontrolled Russian money being considered dirty but corrupt Bill Gates money going into the pockets of politicians being considered clean
Bill Gates has heavily invested in a “methane blockers” startup 2 months ago, now the govt is considering forcing farmers to force feed “methane blockers” to their cows. This is complete corruption and much more to the detriment of the average UK citizen than some random Russian investor
Bill Gates’ net work as of last month: ~ $119 billion.
The ‘heavy’ investment connected to Bill Gates: $12 million.
The investment came from BEV and is a fraction of their over $2 billion portfolio: https://breakthroughenergy.org/our-work/breakthrough-energy-ventures/
They didn’t even stump up the entire $12 million, they ‘led’ it.
Someone read https://rumin8.com/rumin8-secures-investment-from-breakthrough-energy-ventures-and-harvest-road-group-in-phase-2-seed-funding-round/
Bovaer is far more likely to be used any time soon than anything from Rumin8: it’s already available and approved in various jurisdictions – https://www.dsm.com/anh/products-and-services/products/methane-inhibitors/bovaer.html – while Rumin8’s products are still under trial.
Of course that’s a far less interesting story than connecting Bill Gates to something, right?
It was just one example, but if the amount of money is the issue for you then I could just bring up Pfizer
Even Matt Hancock publicly admitted he was pretty much acting as a salesman. In the same leaked messages he’s also talking about a pharma software bill gates also owns
This is hilarious, the Conservatives are very good usually at using corrupt foreign money to build our infrastructure. And then attack the people and countries supplying that money. Hypocrisy doesn’t really over it. I hope Upp wins.
I’d agree that the current government are for sale to the highest bidder, and have repeatedly cosied up to wealthy Russians, but in this case it’s a curious selection of hick-town locations for a Russian-influenced investor to choose. Actually, not in the slightest bit curious, as they’re all the towns around RAF and USAF bases and it’s a fair call to require Upp to find new backers. Of course, if we didn’t have such a spineless government they’d just seize all Russian financial assets in the UK regardless of whether the individuals are sanctioned, and net the value off against the £6bn of aircraft seized by Russia (amongst other things). Any Russian who wants their money back could be directed back to the Kremlin’s customer service desk.
My my, political rants doesn’t even cover this load of rubbish.
I know what you mean, it’s hard to tell if the comments are serious or just a parody! Not a particularly amusing parody, so we’ll go with “serious”.
Oh no, comments saying there’s nuance in a private company’s funding and not simply “muh russia bad”!! so serious rubbish!!