Rural UK Full Fibre Altnet ISP Truespeed Prepares More Job Cuts

Sources have indicated to ISPreview that UK ISP Truespeed, which has deployed their alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband network to over 105,000 rural premises (inc. over 21,000 customers) in parts of Devon, Wiltshire and Somerset in England, has recently put more workers on notice of future redundancies.

The operator, which originally held an “ambitious” overall target of reaching 500,000 properties by 2025, previously suffered a build slowdown and job losses in the latter half of 2023 (here). Like many broadband operators they had come under pressure from the current market conditions (high interest rates, rising build costs, competition etc.) and wisely opted to re-focus their efforts more toward greater commercialisation.

However, sources informed ISPreview this week that Truespeed were preparing another round of redundancies, albeit impacting a smaller number of roles (the suggestion is c. 10-15 people) than the 2023 cuts (c. 150) – a number of staff have also recently marked themselves as #opentowork on LinkedIn (mostly from the network side). But this is still a notable figure for an alternative network of Truespeed’s relatively small size (their ‘About‘ page says they employ over 100 people).

The official line from Truespeed on all this today is one of “no comment“. The same sources also informed us that the operator had then contacted all staff, seemingly including those about to be made redundant, about a pay rise. But we understand that this may simply have been a case of unfortunate timing, as Truespeed were also conducting their annual pay review process, which they do every year at this time.

According to the company’s latest annual accounts to the end of 2023 (published in August 2024), Truespeed reported a 23% increase in turnover to £6.625m (2022: £5.397m), but they also suffered an operating loss of £12.876m (2022: £8.924m) and a loss before taxation of £25.749m (2022: £17.626m). In addition, the company had net liabilities of £84.899m (2022: £59.157m).

In 2024, we also reported that Truespeed and County Broadband were working toward a merger agreement (both are backed by Aviva), which sources tell us is still in the offing. The operators have previously both declined to comment on these reports, and it remains unclear why they haven’t made a formal announcement yet.