Alternative Cornwall UK Broadband Network Wildanet to Cut Jobs UPDATE

More bad news today as alternative rural broadband ISP Wildanet, which is busy deploying a gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of Cornwall and Devon in England, has revealed that “external forces” have pushed them into a period of restructuring that is expected to result in a loss of up to 35 jobs (roughly 18% of the workforce).

The operator, which originally started life as a Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) provider in the same area, has recently been building a fibre broadband network – both commercially and via public investment – and is estimated to have so far covered around 30,000 premises (Ready for Service). Since 2023, Wildanet has also secured several contracts – worth £77m in public investment – to deploy FTTP to over 37,000 premises across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly under the UK government’s Project Gigabit scheme (here and here)

However, the provider is understood to have been coming under the same pressures as many other UK network operators, which typically stems from issues such as high interest rates, rising build costs, competition and the associated difficulty of being able to raise fresh investment.

The situation has frequently been causing similar operators to re-focus their efforts away from new network build and more toward greater commercialisation. Consolidation may then become another option.

A spokesperson for Wildanet said:

“Wildanet runs a dynamic operation which is rolling out a major full fibre digital infrastructure upgrade for Cornwall, while at the same time as evolving the business into becoming a leading South West internet service provider (ISP) and it is important we ensure the long-term sustainability of our operations to continue delivering market choice and leading-edge connectivity to the region.

Like all organisations we must continually review our resource requirements in response to the changing needs of our business, the shift in skill sets required as we evolve and the need to adapt to external forces affecting our business.

We are reviewing our resource requirements to align our business with the future full fibre roll-out strategy in the South West. This is in response to increased costs and the need to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace as well as addressing the changing skills that our business requires as we move forward with our business plan.

We are currently undergoing a consultation with our staff regarding roles impacted by the evolving needs of our operations. At this stage, we cannot confirm exactly how many roles may be impacted, as some positions may be restructured to align with the business’s strategic needs, although we anticipate the number of roles to be affected to be no greater than 35, representing 18% of our current workforce. Where reductions are unavoidable, we are focusing on redeployment, retraining and voluntary opportunities to minimise the impact of any job losses as much as possible. New opportunities have been created in areas such as our sales team for which we are inviting applications from our colleagues in the first instance.

Our priority at this time is to support our people through this transition.

Our commitment to continue delivering and building a new full fibre network across Cornwall, servicing our customers, our investment in our training academy, apprenticeship programs and our position as a pioneering B Corp remains unaffected.”

At the time of writing, it’s not yet clear what this will mean for the fate of Wildanet’s contracts under the government’s Project Gigabit programme, although other operators in this boat have tended to scale-back or pause their commercial builds in order to stay focused on the state aid project. We will attempt to seek an answer to this and report back later.

UPDATE 11:49am

Wildanet has informed ISPreview that this “won’t impact” on their ability to deliver on those Project Gigabit contracts.