New CEO of Rural UK Full Fibre Broadband ISP B4RN Shuns Wholesale

The newly appointed CEO, Tom Rigg, of rural focused full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP B4RN has told Richard Tang, the boss of Zen Internet, in a new interview that their network now passes 27,000 premises in rural areas and is home to almost 14,000 customers. But they have no plans to “split everything off and then try and go wholesale” with the network.

Just to recap. B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) is a registered Community Benefit Society (i.e. they can’t be bought by a commercial operator – so consolidation is not an option – and profits go back into the community) that has already expanded their full fibre network to cover various remote rural parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria, Northumberland, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Northumberland and County Durham.

As usual, Richard’s new interview with Tom starts by digging into the history of B4RN, which is a unique network where members of the local communities they serve have often helped to build the physical network in return for shares (dedicated civil engineering teams do the more complex bits). Due to this, the operator also keeps a strong focus on trying to connect everybody in their communities, including the hardest outlying properties: “It wouldn’t work if we just did the guys at the bottom of the hill,” quipped Tom.

At the same time, B4RN acknowledges that they’re still a smaller player, at least in terms of premises passed (geographically their network is huge) – “[our] build rate is nothing compared to what some of the big altnets are doing … it’s inherently slower in a rural build, it’s in the hundreds [premises] per month,” said Tom before adding, “and we’re ok with that.”

The above is also part of the reason why Tom doesn’t, at present, see much attraction in opening up their network to wholesale so that other retail ISPs can harness it. “It’s all around the economics, it would be very difficult for anybody to invest, and then what market share would they get … I don’t think we see a view where we would purposefully split everything off and then try and go wholesale.” This is a shame, albeit an understandable one.

The interview also touches on the tricky subject of overhead poles vs underground cable ducts, which is somewhat of a hot topic these days (here and here). B4RN has built their network underground, which is naturally a lot easier to do when much of your fibre can be laid across farm land (soft dig) and the countryside. But Tom notes some other examples of why this has worked so well for them.

“From a stats point of view (during Storm Desmond and others), we lost practically nothing in the fibre in these storms, and we kept the power on. But yeah, looking at all the rest of it [operators with overhead poles etc.], that infrastructure was just ‘shooooo’ [seriously damaged] across a wide area. From our experience, underground means it will stay on in extreme weather events,” explained Tom.

Finally, Tom doesn’t appear to be concerned about the risk of their network being overbuilt (Openreach currently only overbuilds a small percentage of their network with FTTP): “We believe there will still be people, who, nobody else is going to want to get to these.”

Tom added that half of B4RN’s market share is because there “really isn’t another operator” for people to choose in their patch, and the other half is because people are “buying into what we stand for” (B4RN has long managed to maintain an enviably high take-up rate that averages around 50%).

“I think it’s great [when homes have] a choice [of full fibre networks] … I don’t see a risk where [the business] will be eroded to the point where we’re unsustainable any more. I think there will always be a demand for that very deep rural connectivity and care of those connections,” said Tom. The full interview, which can be seen below, also touches on other areas like sharing cable ducts (PIA), Ofcom’s new broadband migration system (One Touch Switch), mid-contract price hikes and more..