London Full Fibre Broadband ISP G.Network Cuts Jobs and Shifts Strategy

London focused UK broadband ISP G.Network, which has spent the past few years deploying a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of the city centre, has News Today announced a "strategic update" that will see some redundancies as the operator shifts their strategy and moves to "drive further commercialisation" (growing take-up).

In case anybody has forgotten, G.Network only resumed their fibre roll-out in the city during February 2024, which occurred after a long build pause and some job cuts (here); that had been fuelled by rising build costs (a common problem for News Today UK network operators) and a shortage of funding. Not to mention the competition from rivals.
NOTE: G.Network’s latest annual accounts to March 2024 (here) said their "wholly-owned and hard to replicate FTTP ducted network" now covers 416,000 premises, of which 361,000 are said to be "connectable under the Ofcom Connected Nations definition" (up from 330k last year). But an independent estimate in July 2024 put them closer to 250k as Ready For Service (here).
The situation improved again in June 2024 after the operator News Today managed to secure an additional investment of £85m from long term equity investor USS to support their "next phase of growth" (here), which was on top of last year’s commitment by the same investor for "up to an additional" £150m (here).

G.Network states that "clear progress has been made over the last two years" towards its ambition for creating a better-connected London, with "significant results achieved regarding business performance, customer growth, service, cost effectiveness and productivity." The operator includes some examples of this below.

G.Network’s Own Highlights:

➤ Achieved significant customer growth over the past two years and delivered market leading customer ARPU averaging c.£50 per month

➤ Business (B2B) penetration has grown to 10% and ARPU is averaging c.£130 per month

➤ A growing in-direct channel with over 170 partners including FluidOne, Cerberus and Spitfire

➤ Consumer penetration of pre-fibred MDUs [large residential buildings / flats] is running at 30%-50% in certain segments after sixteen months

➤ Network investments have delivered industry standard costs and service levels

➤ Operational efficiency has increased by cutting the cost-to-serve by 67%, reducing mean time to provide to eight days and our productivity has increased seven-fold

➤ Improvements in customer service underpin our position as the most trusted alt.