Shire Fibre Seek Code Powers to Support Shropshire UK Full Fibre Rollout
A new alternative broadband network provider and ISP called Shire Fibre has today surfaced with a tentative plan to build their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across poorly served parts of Shropshire (England), starting with the small market town of Craven Arms (population of 2,300) and surrounding areas.
In order to do this, they’re first seeking Code Powers from Ofcom, which are typically sought to help speed-up deployments of new fibre networks and cut costs, not least by reducing the number of licences needed for street works. The powers can also help with supporting access to run new fibre via Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts and poles (PIA).
The new provider (company details) has two Directors, Scott and Grace Marnick, and has been setup as a new venture by civil engineering firm SAS Utilities. But at present Shire Fibre’s website is just a holding page and there’s not a lot of extra detail that can be found online about either their plans or level investment.
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Launching a new altnet into an already overcrowded market, which is also under considerable strain due to high builds costs and high interest rates, is currently quite a risky endeavour. On top of that, Openreach has already built a little FTTP into Craven Arms, while Voneus seems to have done the same for most of the town.
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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This just feels like a large-scale FCP and is probably doomed to fail. The market doesn’t need any more altnets, having an altnet for literally every town is overcrowding.
Brilliant move—because nothing says ‘strategic planning’ like diving headfirst into an overcrowded market. Who needs originality when you can just follow the herd…
CPPP, ARPU, CAC… ROI… do the people who conjure up these brilliant ideas even understand the dynamics of this industry and how it works? I think not, especially if you firstly believe you can launch and build a new network today, when you look around and existing well funded (poorly spent) altnets are falling like a feature film with Gerrard Butler.
Richard Tang (of Zen) reckoned in 2021 that if you wanted to get in the fibre game you needed to get in then otherwise you’d miss the boat and that was when market conditions were far more benign.