London Full Fibre ISP G.Network Plans Hundreds of Job Losses

Instability in the UK market for alternative broadband networks has continued to rise today after ISP and network builder G.Network, which had been investing around £1bn to deploy a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network across London, notified staff of future redundancies (sources indicate over 200 jobs could go).

The operator, which last year claimed to have already covered 400,000 premises across London (we haven’t had a solid update since then) and was recently spotted testing Nokia’s 25G PON technology (here), holds a long-term aim of reaching 1.3 million premises by around the end of 2026.

However, the first indication of potential problems at the operator began to surface last October 2022, which occurred after newspaper reports alleged that the provider had recently “warned of the risk that it could go under” and was “is in talks with its banks about raising further capital” (here).

At the time, a spokesperson for G.Network told ISPreview.co.uk that this was “simply not true“, before adding that they “continue to grow steadily amid healthy demand and [are] backed by strong and extremely supportive long-term shareholders.”

Nevertheless, several other builders of new full fibre networks – even some of the largest players – are currently known to be struggling due to a combination of issues, such as rising costs (build, leases etc.), aggressive competition from rivals (e.g. overbuild) and the related need to secure a viable level of take-up by consumers. All of this has a tendency to dampen the appetite of investors, slow builds and put pressure on jobs.

Suffice to say, we weren’t terribly surprised when multiple sources began informing us today that G.Network had notified their staff of future redundancies, which follows similar developments at other operators (e.g. LightSpeed Broadband, Zzoomm, CityFibre etc.). The sources all indicate that over 200 redundancies are expected, which is from their current workforce of 670.

A Spokesperson for G.Network told ISPreview:

“After a strategic review, the new management and shareholders are resetting the operating model to accelerate revenues, network growth and business services. This will lead to G.Network becoming EBITDA positive one year ahead of previous plans. Regrettably, this transition means we are proposing a reduction of 230 roles, roughly one third of roles within the business. This will make G.Network a leaner and more efficient organisation, better placed to serve Londoners with full fibre broadband.”

The announcement contains no update on the progress of their network build, which did appear to slowdown last year, but we can also see from the latest street works data that it’s still very much active across a wide area of London. At the same time, G.Network still appear to be in discussions with new and existing lenders regarding additional debt finance, although no deals have yet been signed.

The decision to change G.Network’s business model is clearly a significant move that will negatively impact a good portion of their workforce (but some will hopefully be redeployed into new roles), although the indication is that they’re now adopting a greater focus on the customer – this may have already helped to improve their customer review scores on other sites.

The provider is also known to be trialling new ways of expanding the network in a more efficient way, such as by harnessing more third-party infrastructure, although this is something that a number of their rivals have already mastered (may help to cut build costs and put the network live sooner than usual). But G.Network also intends to honour its existing contractual commitments to suppliers and other third parties.

Residential customers of the service typically pay from £22 per month for a 150Mbps (50Mbps upload) package on a 24-month contract term (inc. £29 one-off installation fee), which rises to £48 for their top 1Gbps (symmetric) tier with free installation (currently discounted to £24 for the first 6-months).