{"id":41598,"date":"2025-04-30T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T10:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=41598"},"modified":"2025-04-30T11:08:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T10:08:53","slug":"bosses-of-b4rn-ms3-and-quickline-give-update-on-uk-broadband-builds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/04\/bosses-of-b4rn-ms3-and-quickline-give-update-on-uk-broadband-builds.html","title":{"rendered":"Bosses of B4RN, MS3 and Quickline Give Update on UK Broadband Builds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CEO of ISP Zen Internet<\/a>, Richard Tang, has today shared three recent interviews with the bosses of several alternative network providers, including B4RN<\/a> (Tom Rigg), MS3<\/a> (Guy Miller) and Quickline<\/a> (Sean Royce). Each provides a useful progress update on their efforts to deploy full fibre (FTTP<\/a>) broadband across different parts of the UK.<\/p>\n

The first interview is one that combines both MS3<\/a>’s Guy Miller<\/strong> and Quickline<\/a>’s Sean Royce<\/strong>. Just to recap, Hull-based MS3<\/a> is an Asterion<\/strong>-backed network builder that originally aspired to cover 535,000 UK premises with their gigabit wholesale fibre broadband network across the Hull and Humber region of England by the end of 2025. MS3 tends to be a bit more of an urban builder and one that is backed by an unspecified amount of private investment.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> Quickline<\/a> is also supported by around \u00a3300m of public subsidy across four Project Gigabit contracts (here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>), plus c.\u00a3225m in term loans and debt guarantees from the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) and a \u00a325m term loan from NatWest.<\/div>\n

By comparison, Quickline is backed by c.\u00a3500m from Northleaf Capital Partners<\/strong> and tends to focus their builds on rural and semi-rural parts of the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire regions of England. The operator has previously indicated a desire to cover 500,000 premises using a mix of fixed wireless and FTTP<\/a> technologies by the end of 2025, but it’s been a while since they reported on overall build progress (although they do issue lots of smaller community updates).<\/p>\n

The new interview largely focuses on the many challenges of urban vs rural builds, which using the differing perspectives of Quickline and MS3 helps to illustrate why it’s often so much more expensive to tackle rural areas. None of this is particularly new territory for the pages of ISPreview, but we do get some useful progress updates from both providers and a few key quotes.<\/p>\n