Abingdon-based alternative rural gigabit broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has already deployed their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 600,000 premises (mostly in remote rural parts of England), sadly appears to have suffered another round of redundancies over the past few weeks.
The provider, which is home to a customer base of 150,000 (i.e. 25% take-up, with a goal of reaching 29% by the end of this financial year), last suffered a noticeable level of redundancies back in September 2024 (here). This was partly fuelled by the same strains as many other network builders are continuing to experience (i.e. high interest rates, rising build costs and a highly competitive environment).
The last round of job cuts also came as part of Gigaclear’s plan for the “next stage of its development” and a “re-focus on ultra-rural areas“ (i.e. their state aid backed project gigabit roll-out), while at the same time placing greater focus on commercialisation. Sadly, the current market continues to be under many of the same strains as before, and the provider has reportedly also been on the hunt for fresh funding while slowing their build (here).
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The above context may help to explain why, over the past few weeks, ISPreview has noted a sudden increase in the number of staff – mostly from their network build teams – now announcing themselves as being made redundant (#opentowork) via Linkedin and other popular employment platforms. But the exact scale of this remains unclear.
As the CEO of Gigaclear, Nathan Rundle, said earlier this month (here): “We’ve definitely been refocusing our build to go ultra-rural, which means the deployment is slower than it was, and we’re using a lot more BDUK [public] money, while being really clear around those investment cases. I think the current funding climate, as every altnet knows, is tough and ultimately deploying large amounts of capital at the moment isn’t necessarily a logical thing to do.”
Despite this, the provider retains their original aspiration for reaching “over” 1 million UK premises, although at present it remains unclear whether that will be delivered via new build or consolidation with other networks.
Ben Woods, Gigaclear’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), said:
“Gigaclear is offering some employees the opportunity to apply for voluntary redundancy as part of an ongoing review of our build plans for the remainder of 2025 and into 2026.
I would like to extend my thanks to all our colleagues for their commitment and contribution and emphasise that these redundancies are purely voluntary.
As we move forward, our focus remains on bringing more customers onto the network and reinforcing our position as the UK’s leading provider of full fibre broadband to rural communities.”
At this point it’s worth remembering that building Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure into remote rural communities has always been an extremely slow, expensive and complex challenge – particularly for a commercial operator like Gigaclear.
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Put another way, it’s impressive that commercial providers like this have been able to do it to such a scale, and it remains sensible for them to focus more on delivering their Project Gigabit contracts in order to avoid past problems (they’ve previously struggled to deliver on some of their state aid backed deployments, such as for Devon and Somerset).
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They are now in a situation where there is competition, for me I have Vermin XGSPON, or Gigaclear point to point fibre.
I would love to shift away from vermin but they offer 2gbps. If Gigaclear would compete on speed I would shift in a heartbeat, as a relatively high revenue customer.
They can’t do > 1 GBPS on P2P. Do you *really* need 2 GBPS?
They can do >1gbps over point to point with the right equipment in the cabinets. The original build had keymile kit in, not sure if they’ve replaced that it was a while ago, and not sure if there any 10gb line cards available for it. If they are using an Ethernet circuit from a third party to the street cabinet it’ll be the back haul limiting them offering higher speeds. If they have their own or rented dark fibre it will be equipment based nothing to do with P2P being the limiting factor.
They never did – unless its been done more recently however there would have been no business case for it since XGSPON was introduced. Coming back to the other question, do you really need 2 GBPS?
Sadly I only have Gigaclear, be nice if I had a choice though. OpenReach would be fantastic as I could go back to IDnet then. I do use Squirrel Internet though who are pretty fantastic, but sadly Gigaclears network is not very robust and I have had several outages in a year if using them.
Whether they need it or not irrelevant. They want it, they are willing to pay for it, Virgin Media offer it while Gigaclear don’t.
I never said it was an unreasonable request. Want and need are two different things.
We are fairly heavy use case family (on Gigaclear too) and we downgraded from 1 GBPS to 500 MBPS and later 300 MBPS and not once have I actually thought that our service was too slow. In the last month our traffic consumption sits just below 2.5TB for the rolling month.
People don’t need Ferrari’s either, but people buy them and use them happily.
I don’t understand why people are getting worked up about your comment but let’s be honest your use case and why you went virgin is probably 0.1% of the population. For most the decision would be what the 300, 600, 1Gb price difference would be between the providers. Cost normally wins.
We are on Gigaclear and unfortunately they have become. Little unreliable of late I hope it’s not related to the financial troubles they are in.
Depending on use case saving money on subscription can cost time. How much is your time worth if you’re waiting on something to download or upload?
Surely the lower latency of P2P is superior to XGSPON, even if it’s 1gbit Vs 2gbit?
It is the upload I want honestly. Im not voluntarily going back to 1gbps.
They most definitely CAN do over 1gbps on p2p. They tested 5gbps in 2015 before changing their mind.
Sfp28 bidi modules doing 25gbps exist.
And yes, appreciate that not many users will pay for >1gbps. But those users will pay significantly more for it, improving their ARPU.
When a house can get Vermin XGSPON, Gigaclear, and Openreach FTTP, Gigaclear become the slowest option downstream.
In a highly competitive market they can differentiate themselves with better customer service, less down time and more professional installs.
Generally once you take fttp from an altnet you’re stuck with that supplier unless you want another fibre installed. So they have a captive market.
They could push over the top services more, like static IPs, DNS etc. Exploit that their product is less restrictive than the big names can be.
What’s the problem with getting another fibre installed?
One of Gigaclear’s key investors, Equitix, appears to be reluctant to invest all the £420m of equity that it previously committed to the network operator. This is a huge issue and raises concern about Gigaclear doubling down on its ultra-rural fibre buildout. Unless Gigaclear secures fresh capital or significantly more public funding, it will have to significantly scale back its rural investment.
Dang. If a state subsidised supplier with a 25% take-up can’t make it work, what hope is there for any other altnet?
How is it not working? The build activity has slowed, they need fewer people doing build. That doesn’t mean the business is failing.