CommunityFibre Allegedly Discouraged from G.Network Bid Over.. Rodents?

The CEO of alternative UK broadband ISP and network builder CommunityFibre, Graeme Oxby, appears to have suggested that one of the reasons they opted not to make a bid for troubled rival G.Network stemmed from fears that rodents had chewed through its fibre optic cables. But the key issue may be more related to the general cost of maintenance than rats.

Just for a little context. G.Network is currently in administration after being acquired by distressed debt specialist FitzWalter Capital earlier this month (here), but we won’t recap all that again today. Both G.Network and CommunityFibre have deployed a full fibre broadband network across London, although CF’s network is significantly larger with 1.342 million UK homes covered (inc. 185k businesses within 200 metres of their network) and they’ve already overbuilt a fair bit of GN’s fibre.

Suffice to say that the overbuild situation alone makes us sceptical of the business case for CommunityFibre potentially making a play for G.Network, although the goal could also have been more strategic (e.g. denying another rival entry to the area). Despite this, a new report on The Telegraph (paywall) appears to claim that CF ruled out bidding for GN “over fears that rats have chewed through its fibre-optic cables“, which may have attracted costly work to fix.

However, we suspect that the focus on rats in the newspaper’s article is more a reflection of journalistic choice, since rodents are quite a common problem for network operators to tackle and even CommunityFibre will sometimes have to deal with them.

Graeme Oxby, CommunityFibre CEO, said:

“Rodents like ducts and they like fibres which are very tasty.

…

It’s not something we’ve been particularly interested in because we think it’s got quite a lot of structural issues and would be quite an expensive fix.”

The same article does eventually highlight what may be the real issue, which is how G.Network has laid quite a few of its cables down the middle of some busy London roads, rather than under the pavements like most network operators. Suffice to say that this could make it more disruptive and thus costly to repair future damage, regardless of whether that’s been caused by rats or other things.

The added cost of upkeep could perhaps be seen by a potential suitor as having a negative impact upon the company’s asset value in any sale. But Oxby does also point to G.Network having “quite a lot of structural issues“, which makes clear that it’s not just rats he’s worried about, even though that’s where the Telegraph chose to place its focus.

Meanwhile, the Joint Administrators for G.Network said on 13th January 2026 that they’d “secured sufficient funding for the administration process, which will enable the Company to continue to trade as normal and to connect new customers. They do not anticipate that there will be any adverse impact on customers“. The Administrators are now starting to market the business for sale.

Finally, Oxby suggested that consolidation might not be the only option, and he believes that some alternative networks may yet survive to challenge the incumbents: “Clearly there are going to be the distressed consolidations, maybe lender-led or specialist-led, but we don’t feel that consolidation is the only answer. We set up to be successful competitors to the incumbent and introduce some competition into the market … I think that’s got lost a bit.”

G.Network’s most recent accounts reported an 85% increase in turnover to £10.2m in FY2024 and a gross profit of £7.3m (up 62%), with total assets of £453m (up from £394m). But they also suffered an operating loss for the year of £52.8m (down from £67.2m) and are estimated (Enders Analysis) to be carrying a net debt of over £300m.

CommunityFibre’s most recent accounts to the end of 2024 (here) saw revenue grow by 82.2% to £76m (2023: £41.7m), while gross profit increased by 87% to £65.9m and they reported total losses before tax fell of £118.5m (2023: £134.6m).