Job Losses at UK Full Fibre AltNet Broadband ISP Jurassic Fibre UPDATE2
Exeter-based broadband ISP and network builder Jurassic Fibre, which is deploying a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset in England, appears to have recently cut an unspecified number of jobs – mostly impacting those in their civil engineering division. Swish Fibre also seems to be impacted.
The operator, which is being supported by an investment of £250m from Fern Trading and originally aimed to cover 500,000 premises across the region by the end of 2025 (covering 30 towns and villages), previously claimed to have already covered 100,000 premises (June 2022 data). But we haven’t had a solid progress update on their build for some months.
Part of the reason for the relative silence may be due to Fern Trading’s announcement in February 2023 (here), which revealed that the investment firm planned to consolidate the full fibre networks of Jurassic Fibre, Swish Fibre, Giganet and AllPoints Fibre into a single national wholesale network during the course of 2023.
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Back then we speculated that this could result in a few redundancies, albeit while potentially also creating some new roles, although Fern did stress to ISPreview that redundancies were not part of their plan for this initiative. However, in recent days and weeks we’ve begun to hear talk of redundancies at both Swish Fibre and Jurassic Fibre, although Swish has so far not responded to any of our hails.
As for Jurassic Fibre, a number of employees have posted on social media and LinkedIn in the past week to say they’ve either just been made redundant or are expecting to lose their jobs following consultations. The majority of those impacted appear to have held engineering roles (e.g. Civils Supervisors, Project Managers and Contract Managers etc.).
A number of other sources, including one with close links to the operator, have also reported difficulties communicating and working with JF since the redundancies were announced. Naturally, we contacted both Jurassic Fibre and Fern Trading yesterday to seek a comment, but so far they have yet to supply one.
In recent months a number of other full fibre operators have also been announcing job losses (e.g. CityFibre, Zzoomm, Lightspeed Broadband etc.), which often appears to reflect the pressures they’re all under in the current climate. Key issues tend to be rapidly 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.
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Such issues have a tendency to dampen the appetite of investors to keep the funding taps fully open and finding fresh sources of money has become more of a challenge, which tends to slow builds (i.e. forces the operator to focus on take-up, rather than new fibre) and that in turn puts pressure on jobs. But in this case, we’re unsure whether the redundancies at JF stem from those issues or the realities of trying to consolidate four networks into one.
UPDATE 10:58am
According to a presentation that Jurassic Fibre gave to Crediton Town Council in March 2023, the operator’s network now covers “over 150,000 homes and businesses” and they employ over 450 local people in the regions they operate. We don’t currently know if that figure of 150,000 is all Ready for Service (RFS), but they do have quite a wide network in South West England. Credit to James B for uncovering this document.
UPDATE 22nd June 2023
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Following on from the mention of Swish Fibre above. Leaked information suggests that Swish Fibre similarly proposed to cut up to almost 80 jobs. The announcement to staff said, “we informed employees of the need to make redundancies within some of Swish’s Construction and Operation teams.”
The overall business justification for this is said to reflect the “need to increase the number of customers connected to our network and our network capacity, to make our businesses successful. We need to shift from design and build to customer acquisition, installations and customer service.” Some 60 staff are understood to have since left the company, while others are being redeployed to other roles.
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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No surprise really, just following the pattern of other Altnet builders.
Sadly bigger problems are just around the corner, when Altnet investors start pulling out.
Not sure investors are “pulling out”, certainly direct dig and the money it costs seems to be slowing as ISPs move to PIA (which then doesn’t require the labour), doubt Fern are pulling the plug
I hope not and it is sad that people lose their job, we need competition, Openreach have had it good for too long and one good thing about this full fibre thing is that it is bringing competition. the problem here is that any large contracts normally end up with Openreach getting them, so more public money chucked at them.
anyone i know that is saying about going for Fibre I try to get them to go with an altnet and not Out of reach.
@Insider – If Altnet’s business plans aren’t going as well as expected, then I’m afraid yes they will pull their money out.
The investors aren’t fibre optic enthusiasts, many aren’t even British, they’re only in it to make money and if that’s not happening then they will leave.
The sort of investors in altnets are also not looking to the long term. They want to recover their money with a decent multiplier in a few short years, and that was only ever going to happen if secondary investors were flocking to buy altnet assets during the growth stage before the business becomes cash positive.
Those secondary investors have stayed away, and now the initial investors (and some very worried lenders) are looking to try and change the altnet business model from wild-eyed growth to operational profitability. That’s not going to happen easily or quickly, and the next act in this drama is when some lenders refuse to extend their lending, the equity investors collectively panic and try and sell at a loss, and then everybody flees for the exits at the same time. Valuations crash, altnets can’t survive because they’re consuming cash rather than earning it, and you have a classic investment market bust. In such a period of financial market panic, the better businesses are as at risk as the truly dreadful.
The best you can hope for is that some of the assets are scavenged by vultures, and put into a viable business. But that’s not going to be so good even for customers who remain connected, because the new owners will be looking for a return rather than rapid growth, so pricing and discounting will track the big ISPs pricing, so think Virgin Media discounts for new customers and VM pricing at the end of the discounted term.
Sad but not surprising. Hire people who’ve been managing tanning studio or car wash earlier, what can do wrong?
*I meant all altnets not JF only.
Depends what job you expect them to do, and whether they’ve got the right work ethic and common sense. Even in a medium sized altnet, there’s many jobs don’t require telecoms-specific or technical skills, or only require skils that you can’t get on the job.
I wouldn’t go with them purely on the over pushy sales team. I get nuisance cals from them most weeks, despite me telling them I’m not interested and to remove my details from their marketing database.
@Mark G
That’ll be because they are *DESPERATE* for new customers.
Heaven forbid sales staff calling you trying to sell stuff. Whatever next huh?
@Someone Secret
If someone has explicitly told them to stop calling, they are obliged to stop doing so. Sorry you can’t quite grasp cold calling isn’t ‘ok’ when consent was not given.
The irony is that I’ve contacted them several times to ask about availability and they’ve not once returned an email or called me!
Took long enough.
And yes, you can’t get any response from them – they’re even worse than normal. For WEEKS we’ve had a problem where customers (not that there are many) using them cannot access some of our services because they blatantly mangle the hell out of the packets, and you cannot get anyone, at any level, to acknowledge, let alone fix it.
They’ve been massively overstaffed and inefficient for a long time.
I’ve never had any issues getting hold of them to answer technical questions, and been with them for 18 months. Just saying! Maybe I’m just lucky.
@Matt
Great, thanks sample size of 1.
Feel free to message me and raise the many outstanding issues for me since you can magically get a response.
This the same JF who left a business customer disconnected for 6 days and it took repeated phone calls to get them to finally do something despite promising much faster responses.
sample size of 1 yourself here… silly person
@Jamie
Incorrect buddy – you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.
@Vince
Trustpilot have tonnes of reviews of very happy Jurassic customers – so whatever you may post it’s clearly your word against the vast majority of their users.
Is there any other industry in the UK that’s experiencing as many job losses as fibre network builders?
I can’t think of any.
Wait until the govt copies the notes from the Netherlands, Ireland and France to neuter food production and force seize farms
Retail energy suppliers.
Core infrastructure in private hands has been working out so well, recently (and not so recently). Water, trains, broadband… envy of the world, they say. Clearly they aren’t talking about Britain.
Giganet will probably be next. They seem to have stalled on their builds in East Dorset and have probably run out of money.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are bought out by CityFibre as they are building in areas that CityFibre have announced for future builds. That is of course if CityFibre have not run out of money as well.
@Andy. My friend works for Cityfibre, apparently not a nice working atmosphere at the moment.
Employees keeping their heads down, hoping their name’s not on the list for the next round of redundancies.
@Andy
My understanding is Cityfibre is up for sale and looking for a buyer, not looking to purchase other struggling Altnets.
I really hope not, as they are the only ones who have started doing any fibre builds in my city (Winchester). The hope is that at some point they’ll get to my house, but the build pace seems to have slowed down quite a bit.
With interest rates creeping up this will only get worse.
I think this is logical, if you have 4 businesses, which you are merging into one, there will undoubtedly be job losses. If you have 4 heads of civil engineering (one per business) before the merger, the combined company will only need 1 of them. I’m sad for the people, but it’s not rocket science to understand why it is happening, it may well be all four were/are doing well, there just doesn’t need to be duplication of people
About the only person on this article actually speaking sense!
Some hilarious comments on here with a distinct lack of knowledge and really just grasping at thin air.
@Someone Secret…
Please enlighten us with your knowledge!
“Here come the Altnets to wipe out BT”
….
“There go the Altnets”
I am sorry to hear this for those people loosing your job at a broadband company, I am under consultation in my own company. It’s horrible, these companies do so much for the shareholders only, never mind those who have given their all
That what large companies are about, is to make money for the shareholders, if you think they care about their employees, then you are deluded. The company I work for is not different, they pretend they care, but as soon as they can get rid of people they do. that is why I just go to work, do my job, go home and get paid every four weeks, I don’t do any extra these days, it is just a job.
there are jobs around, sadly a lot of them are fewer hours. I am getting to the age where I am really not bothered.
Agree completely with Ad47uk…
It’s very sad but true. It’s no longer about the customers or the employees, just the investors.
It’s a real shame.
You work for Tesco correct Adrian (ad47)?
Ad47uk: “what large companies are about, is to make money for the shareholders”
Well, that’s what they say they’re about. I’ve worked for many different large companies and the only two where they were run to make money for owners was a major London law firm (ie a partnership) and a private equity managed business. So basically those where the top managers WERE the owners, or held a very significant equity stake.
All the others, UK listed or UK subsidiaries of foreign listed companies were run largely for the benefit of senior management. So received wisdom and Emperor’s new clothes were the order of the day, endless fads of efficiency, customer focus, continuous improvement (none of which stuck), no real courage, conviction or talent.
From the grunts point of view the distinction may be moot if you’re getting your cards from either an investor run company, or a self interested management, but it’s an important point overall that most companies aren’t run for the primary purpose of profits or increasing shareholder value. You can mutter all you want about audits and fiduciary duty, but the dismal performance of a typical listed corporate speaks for itself.
Still waiting to see any infrastructure in my close in Taunton, have been waiting for 3 years, delay after delay starting think that im never going to get it. Seems like they do all of the cheaper areas first and dont bother with the rest and not finishing off towns, really annoying. They don’t even respond to any emails I send trying to find out what is actually happening even though we were in phase 2 at the start of the build.
@ethanol
Jurassic haven’t fully covered (or close to fully covered) any area they’ve gone into. Even in the first launch area in Exmouth, far less of it is covered than you might think and that causes problems too.
I wonder if Virgin Media will hoover up some of the AltNets that fail. Instant FTTP network extension for them with minimal build-out cost. An Openreach/VM duopoly.
They won’t but if the price is right you can be sure their parent company will. They aren’t going to be building their way to their coverage target.
This rings bells off the old telewest and ntl days where the big 2 bought all the smaller cable companies instead off building. Openreach don’t buy networks but liberty global/vm02 do! Sky could also benefit from a decent fibre network off there own so sky stream actually works.
Sadly its going to happen to more and more altnets, it even happened at VM02 last year albeit only 40 voluntary redundancies.
Once VM, Openreach and all these altnets have fully scaled all the build jobs will go in favour for field staff. A lot of altnets are trying to focus less on the build and more on getting revenue into their businesses hence the reduction of build staff.
The worm will turn
Build rates are dropping and the construction labour crisis is easing.
Big price cuts in some raw materials are filtering through.
Some element of rationalisation and consolidation is/was inevitable.
Before we become too negative the OR slug would have done nothing has the Alt Nets not been my go g it’s lunch so rapidly. Neither would VM have got it’s backside into gear.
They aren’t going to suddenly disappear, all that’ll happen is they’ll slow down rollout and limit the locations to which they provide services.
As someone said previously this is just a usual business practice when you think about merging or cost cutting.
ANy new news here? I can see the JF “Availability Checker” is not working. Is this an indicator of something?
Hearing that resellers are jumping ship and leaving clients to it.
Reply to “ethanol” on June 6, regarding doing the easy install. We have clients with JF connections at the site and cannot get them connected.
Even worse, we have clients in Honiton, who JF have plagued for months then wont take an order. Now BT are advising they will not FTTP Honiton as JF are there. Who mentioned there was a plan; suggests “Grab and run” is the name of the game and leave those selling on the service with nowhere to turn.
News?
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