The UK broadband market is known for being overly crowded, making it risky for any new player to establish itself. Despite the competition, a new alternative network provider has emerged, Giggle, focusing on building a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the city of Glasgow in Scotland.
This new provider is being backed by Triple Point’s Digital 9 Infrastructure (DI9) fund and has an experienced CEO leading the way. The build plan will span over 300,000 premises across Glasgow, focusing first on social housing, and their total investment in the city will be close to £100 million. The provider will directly employ up to 180 people to support their customers and network, with the majority in Glasgow. They will also have over 150 indirect employees building their network, primarily in the region.
However, the provider will face a lot of competition from other gigabit-capable rivals in the city. Both Virgin Media and Openreach already have extensive coverage of the city, while Cityfibre and Hyperoptic have both covered a significant number of premises and continue to grow. Some smaller FTTP deployments also exist from OFNL and FibreNest in a few new build homes.
While Glasgow is an interesting place for a start-up AltNet like this new provider to set up shop, it seems likely that they will face an uphill battle to penetrate into an already aggressively competitive area. However, the provider has a strong team and enough investment, which makes them one to watch over the next couple of years. As the UK continues to invest in broadband infrastructure, it will be interesting to see how this new provider will establish itself and compete with the established players.
