Kompass Kapital Acquires UK Full Fibre AltNet LightSpeed Broadband
Alternative network provider and UK ISP LightSpeed Broadband, which recently announced job cuts and a slowdown of their plan to reach over 1 million premises across the East of England with a gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) network by 2026 (here), has been acquired by Kompass Kapital for an unspecific sum.
Just to recap. LightSpeed previously secured an investment of £60m from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund in 2021 (here), which was on top of the £55m they got before that from AtmosClear Investments, Kompass Kapital and Thesaurium. The funding enabled the operator to start building across parts of 32 towns, such as Boston, Bourne, Braintree, Clacton-on-Sea, Market Deeping, Skegness, Spalding, Stamford and more.
In April 2023 the operator informed us that they were now “approaching 320,000 enabled premises“, although after some prodding, we learnt that only 120,000 of those were actually considered Ready for Service (i.e. live and connectable by customers). But independent data from Thinkbroadband had, at the time, so far only been able to uncover around 35,000 RFS premises covered by their network, which is an unusually big gap.
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However, as part of that same update, the ISP also revealed that some of their 125 strong team had been notified of potential redundancy and the operator would slow their rollout. “But it’s time for a re-organisation to reflect the fact that we are slowing the network build rate and focussing our resources on supporting our customers and launching new services. We recognise that reorganisations are always difficult. The detailed plan is not yet complete, but it is likely that the headcount reduction will be greater than 19 staff,” said a spokesperson.
As we’ve reported before, 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. Such issues have a tendency to dampen the appetite of investors, slow builds and put pressure on jobs.
The good news today is that one of LightSpeed Broadband’s original backers, Kompass Kapital, has acquired 100% of the share capital from the Atmosclear Investments Group, which gives them an overall controlling stake in the business. As part of this transaction, Kompass Kapital has also committed an unspecified amount of new capital to the business, which will be utilised to develop and expand their network and ISP offerings.
Bradley Berger, Managing Partner of Kompass Kapital, said:
“LightSpeed has exceptional leadership, best-in-class management, and wonderful professionals across the organisation. We have a great deal of confidence in our team and are excited about the opportunity ahead and the role we can play in the UK digital infrastructure space.”
Graham Bell, Company Director, added:
“LightSpeed is thrilled to welcome Kompass Kapital as controlling equity stakeholder. With this new investment, LightSpeed is poised to accelerate its growth trajectory whilst remaining committed to providing reliable and affordable full fibre broadband services to its valued customer base.
Finally, we extend our gratitude to Atmosclear Investments Group for their invaluable support during their tenure as our shareholder. Their contributions have played a significant role in shaping LightSpeed’s journey thus far.”
The deal represents good news for LightSpeed, which should at least enable them to continue building, although at the time of writing it remains unclear how this might impact their existing coverage target and future pace of build. Much will depend upon precisely how much additional investment Kompass is willing to push into the business, since they’ll need a fair bit more funding in order to reach 1 million premises, assuming that’s still the aim.
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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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Lightspeed trying to put a positive spin on being taken over
Natural progresssion and unsurprising if you read the various funding releases previously about lightspeed going back to it’s beginnings
This transaction has a fair few folks in pretty high places scratching their heads for sure.
Slowing build, shedding staff and being acquired seems more of a rescue than a natural progression. Returning to beginnings usually means that a business tried to be something else, in this case become a bigger altnet player, and it went wrong.
Sounds like the investment they get needs to be used to remediate their network
Approaching 320k informed.
ISP found it to be 120k rfs.
Thinkbrodband only managed to uncover 32k rfs!
That escalated(de-escalated) very quickly!
The customer number will be 5 to 8% of the actual rfs. Trustpilot number of reviews reflects this
They sold out at a discount
Working on a more recent build figure.
@John
They offered me free for 12 months whilst my ISP ran out. I never told them I was on Cuckoo and on a 1 moth FTTC contract so I cut it off and then had 11 months totally free – they never asked me so 😀
People here in North Norfolk are paying ISPs above inflation rates with their mid contract price increases on copper to the home.
I hope Lightspeed becomes successful by supplying a better product at the same or cheaper price (they do a low end 100mbits up and down for £24.95).
Not a good investment decision by Kompass Kapital!
The main issues with LightSpeed can be summarized as follows:
1)
No proper rollout plans. E.g. there are many areas where its online checker simply says this: “We’re working on it!”, often for more than 1 1/2 years. Its rollout still resembles a postcode lottery in some towns.
2)
No static IP addresses, it only uses CGNAT. Static IP-addresses were originally promised by its former CEO Steve Haines more than 1 1/2 years ago (see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/11/lightspeed-broadband-list-next-fttp-rollout-towns-in-essex-and-norfolk.html#comment-254331), but were never introduced.
3)
Building in areas where there are already other fibre providers, such as Clacton or Braintree. And now Openreach has caught up, too, with its own fibre in many of Lightspeed’s planned areas. There are quite a few areas where Lightspeed deployed fibre to the poles and ducts, often over a year ago, and then simply not followed through with the final connections to the premises until now.
It’s doubtful that LightSpeed will ever reach the planned 1 million premises by 2026, not with its current poor rollout management.
on 3) there are towns with Netomnia, Upp, Lightspeed, Virgin and BT haha these are tiny towns nowhere near the size of a single London borough that can, to some extent, accommodate this level of overbuild
Really gnewton.
I do wonder if you every happy about anything ever
As you seem to be unhappy about everything
And seem to know not a lot generally
@Fastman: Do you have anything constructive to say here?
Most users will agree that LightSpeed has some issues which it needs to sort out, to gain some tract. Just throwing more money at it isn’t the solution.
@John: And I bet I can name that town. Lightspeed have built their network two streets away from where I am, on telegraph poles all around the estate I am on. But because my street and several others have all underground ducts they won’t touch them.
Around the town we have Openreach, Upp, Netomnia and Lightspeed building and in many places at least 2-3 of them build on the same streets. Now Virgin are contracted by some altnets to build their networks, plus on new house builds in the town another company called OFNL are also putting their network in.
martin
because my street and several others have all underground ducts they won’t touch them.
underground . ducted or underground buried (they are fundamentally different)
please be under illuson if it undergound buried (direct in ground)( that a problem for anyone and it give or take close to £1000 per premises or more in build cost for any provider eg openreach , bob telecom , anyone
John: “there are towns with Netomnia, Upp, Lightspeed, Virgin and BT haha these are tiny towns nowhere near the size of a single London borough that can, to some extent, accommodate this level of overbuild”
Accommodate physically yes. Financially no. Even VM make no worthwhile return from their cable & RFoG network, the chances of multiply overbuilt altnets ever breaking even is nil. Not only are they competing with each other, they’re competing with two much larger companies in BT and VM with well established brands and very highly developed sales and marketing capabilities, plus all the large LLU ISPs like Sky, TT, and Vodafone. And if people like smaller ISPs, there’s the likes of A&A, uno, IDNet and many others via Openreach.
At typical altnet capital cost per paying customer there’s no way most they can generate a viable return on capital anywhere near current pricing, and the likely conversion rates from RFS to paying customer won’t make much difference, especially in areas with two or more alternatives.
We’re not happy about all the false estimates here in Harwich. Many people were told the rollout would be complete ages ago. I was told by an engineer by Nov/Oct last year, then March, then June… many others say they were told similar. I didn’t renew my last contract for another year based on this and the fact you’ve had the gear on the poles for yonks now. Left tethering my mobile internet like a fool, but I’ve got used to it and now I’m probably just going to wait for Openreach as thankfully they’ve decided to compete and will probably beat you here anyway at this rate. Then at least I can choose an ISP with a static IP option and buy my own router.
“and will probably beat you here”
I wasn’t aware the great Mark Jackson was in a race to Harwich 🙂
I don’t expect openreach will fttp Harwich or some of the other towns that were on its commercial footprint
@Fastman: Openreach may have its own issues (e.g. no symmetric fibre), but it recently has covered a lot of same areas in Harwich where LightSpeed went live.
Thinkbroadband data is not that accurate, they rely on either scraping websites or asking ISPs to volunteer their postcode data. If the latter is not forthcoming then scraping is not very reliable.
Andrew and the team at Thinkbroadband probably hold the best set of data for broadband availability in the UK and most people would agree with me.
If you know of a better source we are all willing to here about it.
PS – You don’t know what you’re talking about little Jim.
It is correct for many 🙂 providers stops uploading data to TB when they want to hide overbuilding or poor build speed.
@Jeremy
and you know that for a fact???? or are you like little Jim making things up.
You don’t have to believe me 🙂 But yes it is a fact and it is logical.
@Jeremy
I don’t believe you 🙂
The whole altnet thing is starting to remind me of the early days of satellite TV back in 1989/1990. BSB started a year after Sky, Technically superior with but with fewer channels, managed to burn through a load of cash before being merged with Sky before it went under completely.
And the earlier days of UK cable. Loads of operators, nobody made any money, they’ve consolidated progressively down to one national cable operator, and (from the cable network) VM still are not really making any money.