Rural Broadband ISP Truespeed Extends FTTP to 109,000 UK Premises
Alternative network provider Truespeed, which have deployed their full fibre (FTTP) broadband network to rural parts of Devon, Wiltshire and Somerset in England, has published their annual accounts to the end of 2024 and revealed that they’ve now covered 109,000 premises RFS (up from 100k in Jun 2024) and have 24,000 customers (up from 21k).
The operator, which originally held an “ambitious” overall target of reaching 500,000 properties, has suffered a slowdown in their network build and a number of redundancies since 2023 (here and here). Like many altnets this has been fuelled by the current market conditions (high interest rates, rising build costs, competition etc.) and they’ve wisely opted to tackle this by re-focusing toward greater commercialisation.
Interestingly, the company published their previous set of accounts back in August 2024, which covered the period to the end of 2023. But this year they appear to have brought their latest results – covering the period to the end of December 2024 – forward by several months and published them on 5th June 2025 instead (here).
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According to the latest annual accounts, Truespeed reported a 40% increase in revenue to £9.27m (2023: £6.62m or an increase of 23% on 2022). But they also suffered an operating loss of £10.41m (2023: £12.87m) and a loss before taxation of £25.03m (2023: £25.74m). In addition, the company had net liabilities of £109.93m (2023: £84.89m).
Last year we reported that Truespeed and County Broadband were working toward a merger agreement (both are backed by Aviva), which sources tell us is still the plan. But the network operators have previously declined to comment on these reports, and the latest accounts make no obvious mention of an agreement. Suffice to say that the wait for a bigger development or wider consolidation announcement goes on.
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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Those financial figures are the stuff of nightmares, what a mess
£109m liabilities for 109,000 properties passed – a nice round £1,000 per property passed. Way above what is commercially viable.
How is this possible it is even higher than gigaclear and they build in dense areas like Bristol and Bath
Aviva Investors agree that it’s not commercially viable.
From note 11 in the accounts for Aviva Investors Infrastructure Income No.6 Limited:
Loan to Truespeed Communications Ltd £167,151,138
Impairment of loan to Truespeed Communications Ltd (£56,627,003)
At least they’re doing better than County Broadband.
From note 11 in the accounts for Aviva Investors Infrastructure Income No.6C1 Limited:
Loan to County Broadband Limited £127,767,814
Impairment of loan to County Broadband Limited (£103,885,166)
Aviva Investors now own the vast majority of County Broadband shares. I expect they’ve been having similar discussions with Truespeed.
I genuinely cannot understand why Aviva have invested so much money into ISPs when they are not likely to see any money back on their investments.
As Openreach build in areas people will eventually flock to them. They are going to be left with some rather expensive paperweights and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try to sell it off.
A very good point indeed. Yet the CEO continues to present to staff that the cost per property to build is roughly around £300!
The directors are just lining their pockets, they made over 150 employees redundant in 2023 and within a month the board approved a £674k share buy back scheme out of capital.
This village has Openreach, Nexfibre and Truespeed. All installed over the last year. Lots of digging.
Very interesting to say the least.
Look at the renumeration of the highest paid director for qualifying services £382,763. The company only has ~125 employees!!!
2 of the current directors created a new company Truespeed Holdings Limited on the 23rd May 2025. Wonder why…..
So many of these Altnets have been run into the ground by useless CEO’s who have been dining out on all the ‘Pork’. Most don’t have any of the founders left. Motivated by lining their own pockets I suspect most are looking to jump ship and find some other industry to milk.
This is just the same as the water industry. Fat cats at the top have done very well at driving up debts.
Zero interest in making any profit, as quite frankly they don’t know how.
Welcome to the brave new world of late stage capitalism.