Voneus Face Rural Broadband Complaints in Shropshire and Powys

Rural broadband ISP Voneus, which has built a mix of full fibre (FTTP) and fixed wireless broadband networks across parts of Wales and England, has pledge to “increase community communication” after more than a hundred complaints about their service were raised by residents through two MPs for Shropshire and Powys.

According to the BBC News, the complaints highlighted issues of connection drops, extremely poor speeds (sometimes sub-1Mbps) and customer support being slow to respond or failing to rectify the problem. The issues have been raised with Voneus by Heather Kidd, Councillor for Chirbury & Worthen (Shropshire), and Danny Bebb, who represents Churchstoke on Powys Council.

Kidd said she had logged more than 60 complaints, which is on top of the 69 from neighbouring divisions. Many of those complaints seem to relate to the network areas that were previously served by SWS Broadband. In case anybody has forgotten, SWS was merged into Voneus last year (here) and most of the networks they built in this area used fixed wireless access (FWA) technologies (they also had some plans to deploy FTTP).

The article largely focuses upon problems in Rowley (Shrewsbury), although it also lists other locations with complaints, such as Habberley, Vennington, Brompton, Marton, Stoney Stretton, Montgomery, Stiperstones and Pennerley. This is sadly not the first time we’ve heard complaints about Voneus this year (here and here).

A Spokesperson for Voneus said:

“We appreciate the comments and concerns raised by councillor Kidd and councillor Bebb. We will increase community communication whilst we complete a number of fibre network builds and network upgrades across Shropshire and Powys.”

Some of these areas may at least have access to reasonable mobile broadband connectivity as an alternative, but many do not, and locals often have little desire to go back to older copper lines. The Starlink (LEO satellite) service is another option but, at £75 per month (plus £299 for the hardware), it’s not something that everybody can afford and most just want Voneus to deliver what SWS before them promised.

Earlier this year Voneus also secured the £12m (state aid) Project Gigabit contract to connect 6,000 premises across Mid West Shropshire (Lot 25.01) to their gigabit-capable broadband network (here), which is expected to be rolled out across rural areas like Alberbury, Westbury, Snailbeach, Wentnor, Ford, Hanwood, Longden, Dorrington, Leebotwood and Bicton (here). This may also make upgrading some of the problematic SWS areas a bit easier.

Until recently Voneus was being backed by up to £250m from investors including Macquarie Capital, IIF, Tiger Infrastructure Partners and bank lenders. But they’ve since secured a further £25m investment boost from Global Connectivity PLC (G-CON) in January 2024 and then an injection of £18m (capital) from Rural Broadband Solutions Holdings Limited (RBSHL) in June 2024 (here). The G-CON and RBSHL investments are closely connected because G-CON holds a sizeable stake in RBSHL.

However, we appear to have missed another recent announcement from G-CON, which last month pushed another capital investment worth £20m into the company.

G-CON Statement on 21st Nov 2024

Global Connectivity plc (AQSE: GCON), a company focused on communication services and technologies that enhance connectivity and a shareholder in leading UK broadband provider Voneus Limited (“Voneus”) through its investment in Rural Broadband Solutions Holdings Limited (“RBSHL”) is pleased to announce that on 14 November, a further combined capital investment of £20m was made into Voneus by its shareholders.

As reported on 12 June 2024, RBSHL’s stake in Voneus increased to 41%. In August, the further capital injection reduced GCON’s holding in RBSHL to 11.8% and we reported a valuation of £13.6m in our half year results for the six months ended 30 June 2024 as a post period event, which equated to 3.75p per GCON share.

With this latest November investment, RBSHL’s stake in Voneus remained at 41% after investing £8.2m of the £20m. As in August, Global Connectivity plc again elected not to invest and now owns a 9.5% stake in RBSHL’s common equity. This equates to £11.7m or 3.2 pence per GCON share. The intrinsic value of Voneus should be expected to have increased at the point of future investment, which serves to mitigate the effects of dilution for GCON.