Rural UK ISP GoFibre Cover 100,000 Premises with FTTP Broadband
Edinburgh-based network builder and ISP GoFibre (BorderLink), which is rolling out a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across rural parts of North England and the Scottish Borders, has today announced that they’ve passed a key milestone by covering “more than” 100,000 premises with their new infrastructure.
The announcement represents significant build progress for such a young alternative network, which aims to cover 500,000 premises in the North of England and Scotland by around the end of 2025 and is supported by an investment of £164m from Gresham House (here).
As of June 2024, GoFibre claims that their full fibre network is now “ready for service” (RFS) to more than 100,000 premises, spanning key regions (“across more than 30 local areas“) including:
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➤ Aberdeenshire: 9,600 premises
➤ Angus: 12,200 premises
➤ Fife: 23,500 premises
➤ East Lothian and Midlothian: 21,500 premises
➤ Scottish Borders: 23,900 premises
➤ North Northumberland: 11,200 premises
➤ Durham-Teesdale: 3,700 premises
Neil Conaghan, CEO of GoFibre, said:
“We are proud to have reached this significant milestone in such a short length of time, because that means we’ve been able to make a positive impact on even more lives and businesses quicker. In today’s digital world, where online activity is ever-increasing, a reliable high-speed broadband connection is essential and not having it in place can really hold people and businesses back from reaching their full potential.
Our unwavering local focus and dedication to customers and local communities sets us apart. Scottish engineering and ingenuity has driven us to achieve this milestone, and has ensured that we can provide responsive, high-quality customer service from experts with local knowledge.
This accomplishment firmly places us on the map as a major broadband provider in our regions, and we can’t wait to continue expanding our services, bringing high-quality connectivity to even more communities and customers. Our commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction will drive us forward as we build on this success.”
Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £36 per month (currently discounted to £29) for a 135Mbps (25Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £69 per month (currently discounted to £49) for their top 900Mbps (100Mbps upload) plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans at extra cost).
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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What is the point of this PR? Is GoFibre pretending to be younger than they are? They make it sound like they are a leader in the rollout of FTTP yet they have been going since at least 2020 and have only achieved 100,000 prems passed, when competitors such as Netomnia have done 850,000 in the same period.
With a target of 500,000 by the end of 2025, and claiming to have reached 100,000 after 4 years, put its build pace at 25,000 per year on average. Are they suggesting they are going to build 400,000 prems in the next 18 months? They would need to build 22k+ / month on average to reach this target which just seems unrealistic for them. Let’s not mention that they are competing against Openreach and Netomnia in many locations who’s pricing is generally better anyway. Seems they just have an appetite for spending money and not making it.
Some of their premises passed are unlikely to ever see a single customer. For example they rolled out in Cupar in Fife *after* Openreach had rolled out (check it on thinkbroadband’s coverage maps). Yet service from GoFibre is more expensive than the likes of TalkTalk or Plusnet and comes with CGNAT unless you are willing to spring £5 a month for a static IP. Sure they might have had detailed plans for Cupar but the moment Openreach rolled out they should have thrown them in the bin unless they are willing to be more cost competitive, especially if they are ramming CGNAT down your throat. The only upside is if you are willing to spring another £5 a month you can have a symmetric connection.
Perfect analysis @TJ.
GoFibre were carrying over £32m debt 18 months ago (Dec 22) and they hit 35k prems in Q1CY23.
That £32m debt could be £50m, £75m, £100m now, who knows, to get to the 100k prems.
Even at £500 per prem those 100k are “worth” no more than £50m.
That’s low/no return once debts are paid off.
Someone’s going to have to take haircuts somewhere.
In the meantime they’re going to be paying 10-12% on debt, £3-4m a year (2022 debt) up to £5-10+m depending on current debt! Good luck covering that, and other costs from turnover!
I noticed from ThinkBroadband’s article that overbuild in the areas that GoFibre is choosing to roll out is rampant:
“One area we’ve seen is overbuild by competing networks, so of the 67,000 footprint mapped 40,000 premises have another FTTP network option and 11,000 premises have two other networks competing for customers.”
As you say Anonymouse, it’s hard to see how GoFibre will ever turn to profit especially with the size of their workforce/wage bill.
Glad they pull out of my village in East Lothian after getting a mail shot through the door ,looks like I dodge a bullet ,also managed to get fibre from openreach eventually so at least I now have a choice