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Zzzoom is outsourcing it's build

plunet

ULTIMATE Member
Reported in the Telegraph today...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...off-hundreds-engineers-broadband-woes-deepen/

BT challenger Zzoomm is laying off hundreds of engineers as smaller broadband firms grapple with a funding crisis.

The Oxfordshire-based company, which is rolling out full-fibre internet connections across the UK, will start outsourcing its network build in a bid to conserve cash.

Around 300 employees in its construction team, including engineers and office roles, will be made redundant – equivalent to more than 50pc of the company’s workforce.

...

It was set up by Matthew Hare, founder and former chief executive of rural full-fibre network Gigaclear.

Zzoomm currently has around 11,000 customers and its network has reached 135,000 properties, with a take-up rate of around 7pc. It is aiming to reach one million properties by 2025.

In 2021, it secured £100m from a consortium of banks led by ING to help accelerate its build.
 
Matthew Hare doesn't seem to be having much luck. Gigaclear was on its backside when he left.

Given the premises passed and everything else I would bet they've about burned through that £100 million and are trying to secure funding with these redundancies a part of that: trying to lower operational costs and be more attractive to investors.

I'm not convinced it'll work, but I'm not an expert. Might be another altnet joining others in strife, with a fire sale or even administration and wind up incoming.
 
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Matthew Hare doesn't seem to be having much luck. Gigaclear was on its backside when he left.
Might be slightly harsh, though there are people who are excellent at starting companies, getting the ball rolling, and once things are ticking over don't achieve success pushing forward. So it's possible that's just his strength.

Him hopping from one altnet to start another may make him personally less appealing to investors, but all of this is speculation until someone close to the ground can give an update really.
 
Running a small business is very different from running a big business, so managers who only have experience at the smaller scale often run into difficulties when they have to scale up (especially if it's a rapid scale-up). Gigaclear seemed to run into that problem (took on too many contracts and then struggled to adapt their management/planning etc.), which is why investors often like to change the management when they take control of a business.
 
7% is not a huge amount by any means and this is the problem with a lot of Alt nets, converting the amount of premises passed to customers. But news like the above will put some people off altnets as they could end up having to change again if the provider goes belly up.

Matthew Hare giving up one ISP have made me wonder if I would trust him to run another provider.
 
7% is not a huge amount by any means and this is the problem with a lot of Alt nets, converting the amount of premises passed to customers. But news like the above will put some people off altnets as they could end up having to change again if the provider goes belly up.

Matthew Hare giving up one ISP have made me wonder if I would trust him to run another provider.
Going busted doesn't really benefit investors, unless of course the debt is not on them but won't make them non investors. It will be much better for the investors to sell the network to the highest bidder to recover as much as they can. And anyone buying the distressed Altnet network will be much interested in adquiring existing customers which add revenue to their accounts to soften the blow of the network adquisition. So I doubt many people will end up without service. And it's even possible Ofcom names an ISP of last resort or even keeps the show running long enough for a sale to happen.
 
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My parents' house is passed by Zzoomm and they've been receiving pretty much non-stop marketing materials from the firm, so I looked them up a while ago. Yet another altnet covering what seems like a random selection of small towns with the same old offering. I just can't see how this market survives without significant consolidation - lots of independent networks with all the overheads that come with being a standalone, each covering small and mostly suburban areas.
 
My parents' house is passed by Zzoomm and they've been receiving pretty much non-stop marketing materials from the firm, so I looked them up a while ago. Yet another altnet covering what seems like a random selection of small towns with the same old offering. I just can't see how this market survives without significant consolidation - lots of independent networks with all the overheads that come with being a standalone, each covering small and mostly suburban areas.
Yeah consolidation is inevitable, as well as focusing on customer services, support and singing up new customers As otherwise they will die. And if we are honest really and all altnets end up being a third viable network ISP we should expect them to become the same as all the other big Telcos in the world. Once the build finishes and the opportunities for big customer growth end I would think broadband prices will go up as investors push for higher ROI. Even with 3 network ISPs we know that will not work in practice as the customers that can actually select any of the 3 networks will not be the majority. Look at what happened with Netflix. It was all good to share your account until they stopped growing and needed to find new sources of revenue…
 
We only have to look back at how VirginMedia which was C&W which was ntl: which was ntl telewest, which was previously many separate cable companies came about.

I'm in the former Jones cable area. Remember them. No, didn't think so ;)
 
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Even with 3 network ISPs we know that will not work in practice as the customers that can actually select any of the 3 networks will not be the majority.
My current address has the choice of Openreach FTTP, CityFibre FTTP and Virgin "Gig1" - is this particularly uncommon?

If I won big on the lottery, I'd move to a house with sea views. But if I won moderately on the lottery, I'd get all three and bond them just for a laugh.
 
My current address has the choice of Openreach FTTP, CityFibre FTTP and Virgin "Gig1" - is this particularly uncommon?
Not really. All three of these have overlap, it’s only CityFibre which isn’t nationwide. If you’re in a CityFibre area there’s a chance the other two will exist.
 
For technology companies that were around in the early days of the web, it's amazing how there's so little on the interwebs for some of them.

Jones Cable had the franchise in and around Watford.


Just had a look for Diamond Cable who were a bigger operation in the East Midlands and there's a little more out there but still not much.

Will we find much of a digital footprint for the smaller altnets in 20 years time?
 
We only have to look back at how VirginMedia which was C&W which was ntl: which was ntl telewest, which was previously many separate cable companies came about.

I'm in the former Jones cable area. Remember them. No, didn't think so ;)
Virgin Media was never C&W. ntl: bought C&W Consumer Co. ntl merged with Telewest to form ntl:Telewest. Actually reverse takeover, Telewest legally acquired ntl:.
 
Virgin Media was never C&W. ntl: bought C&W Consumer Co. ntl merged with Telewest to form ntl:Telewest. Actually reverse takeover, Telewest legally acquired ntl:.

I definitely had a couple of years of getting bills from C&W with the blue dotty globe logo for my cable service with 128kbps "broadband" included before it became ntl: - this was around the turn of the century.

In fact I can remember having waited in all day for a C&W engineer to fix a no service fault and by 4.30pm on Friday having not seen an engineer being able to call faults and quoting my corporate (work) account number which had a significant monthly spend and using that to escalate getting a engineer visit. An engineer was dispatched from an adjacent area, he didn't have the right keys for the local street cabs but I did get reconnected around 7.30pm that evening.
 
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My current address has the choice of Openreach FTTP, CityFibre FTTP and Virgin "Gig1" - is this particularly uncommon?

If I won big on the lottery, I'd move to a house with sea views. But if I won moderately on the lottery, I'd get all three and bond them just for a laugh.
Not really. I have Openreach FTTP, Community Fibre FTTP and VM 1gig too. My friend in Brixton has those 3 plus G.Network.
 
My current address has the choice of Openreach FTTP, CityFibre FTTP and Virgin "Gig1" - is this particularly uncommon?

If I won big on the lottery, I'd move to a house with sea views. But if I won moderately on the lottery, I'd get all three and bond them just for a laugh.
I can't wait for the day is is the standard for everyone, just having two choices of fttp would be nice, imo.
 
I can't wait for the day is is the standard for everyone, just having two choices of fttp would be nice, imo.
It would be nice if everyone had at least two choices unfortunately it seems that we will end up with most having 1 FTTP option, some having 2 and some urban areas having more than 2. A lot of people think overbuilding is wasting money and resources I don’t. We can’t have true competition unless we have overbuilding. Look at the energy market for instance. There is no much competition on prices and plans really.
 
There was some noise around Virgin and CityFibre recently, too - I think those will eventually end up combined, and most of the little altnets like Zzoomm will become part of CityFibre/Virgin or combine into a single non-CF altnet.

I'm old enough to remember Digital Region in the Sheffield area - it was an early FTTC network and went bust mainly because Openreach rolled out FTTC in the same areas and was easier to sign up to (I recall Digital Region was an absolute pain to get connected to, it took months). Their main asset wasn't a customer base (because they barely had one) but fibre in the ground, which got sold to (I think) Zayo for business and infrastructure use.

The same is true of these small altnets - Zzoomm is a minnow, its customer base won't be worth a great deal and its brand is worthless, but its physical fibre in the ground will at some point be valuable to a larger operator.
 
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