The CEO of alternative network operator AllPoints Fibre (APFN / Fern Trading), Jarlath Finnegan, has today told ISPreview – in a new interview – of his ambition for the company to become the “UBER of the full fibre wholesale market“, which reflects their desire to help “accelerate” the delivery of related UK broadband services over the next few years.
In case anybody has forgotten, AllPoints Fibre Networks was officially formed between 2023 and 2024 from the consolidation of three alternative broadband networks and ISPs (here and here), including Giganet, Swish Fibre and Jurassic Fibre. All of the companies were backed by Fern Trading and had previously been deploying FTTP networks to premises across different parts of the UK.
The consolidation occured against the backdrop of a market under growing strain from various challenges, such as rising build costs (inc. high interest rates), network overbuild and competition. Such strains had already put pressure on Fern’s various altnets and consolidation was seen as part of their strategy for creating a more efficient, flexible and diverse network.
The outcome saw APFN take on the role of a single national wholesale network for all of the aforementioned fibre operators, while UK ISP Cuckoo became the main outlet for all their retail customers. Since then APFN has also acquired another retail ISP in the shape of Glasgow-based full fibre ISP Brillband (here), which isn’t touched on in this interview because we conducted it just before that announcement.
However, just to be clear, while APFN has previously talked about harbouring post-consolidation plans to “accelerate full fibre delivery over the next five years”. Jarlath makes clear that the focus here is no longer on driving new network build. Instead, the operator is developing a wholesale offering that has a wider reach, which includes onboarding new networks and providing ISPs with access to operators that were once rivals (e.g. Openreach, CityFibre etc.).
“Think of us as the UBER of the full fibre wholesale market,” said Jarlath. “We are absolutely pushing to accelerate full fibre delivery. But this is not a build strategy: we are a wholesaler offering amazing service experiences to our customers.”
In the following interview, Jarlath also remarks that it would be “crazy for the Government to use [gigabit broadband] vouchers in urban areas” (these are currently limited to rural areas), while also saying that he’s “broadly happy with the current [markets] regulatory framework and would like to see it maintained“. On top of that he calls for altnets to “avoid under-pricing full fibre into which billions has been invested in a dash for customer numbers.”
The APFN Interview
1. I think it’s fair to say that APFN has had a busy couple of years, not least with the effort to consolidate the full fibre broadband networks of Giganet, Jurassic Fibre, and Swish Fibre under a single infrastructure brand, while at the same time splitting the retail bases of those providers out to Cuckoo. Has this consolidation drive now fully completed, and what did you find to be the biggest challenge in the process?
Jarlath Finnegan said:
In February 2023 we began the journey to extract all the best parts of each of the individual investments and create our national full fibre platform ‘aquila’, but more about that later. We wanted to rip up the rule book in the way full fibre services are delivered across the UK without having to build or buy to every premise. Think of us as the UBER of the full fibre wholesale market. We strongly believe the best way to challenge the market is to prove that our platform delivers, so we needed a customer with the same mindset and who better to work with initially than Cuckoo, who deliver fast, fair, feel-good broadband.
APFN is now supporting Cuckoo in their migration off legacy brands and networks, and they will be one of the first customers to benefit from the APFN aquila platform. We’re really excited to onboard further ISPs and Partners in the coming months who will have the advantage of our disruptive, seamless platform.
2. Prior to the consolidation, we had an incomplete idea of how much network coverage had been delivered by the aforementioned networks (premises passed / RFS) or how many customers they’d managed to acquire. Are you now in a position to share such details?
Jarlath Finnegan said:
aquila is network agnostic and currently offers access to 18m homes. This is increasing each quarter as our network partners continue to deliver new homes and business. We have also lit up and cut over onto our aquila national backbone network which we know is currently the fastest, most resilient way to traverse the UK. Our aquila edge network deployment is underway which means we will deliver amazing service experiences every time. We’re confident that the experience we’ll provide isn’t just better than our competitors; it’s unique.
3. APFN has previously indicated that, with the consolidation out of the way, they would push to “accelerate full fibre delivery over the next five years”. But the current environment has proven to be extremely challenging for many alternative networks, due to high build costs, strong competition and the difficulties of trying to raise fresh investment during a period of high interest rates.
Sadly, challenges like this have caused some operators to make redundancies and scale-back their network builds, which is something that we recall has affected APFN’s networks in the recent past too. Given all of this, can you possibly offer a bit more detail about what APFN’s actual network roll-out plans are for the next year or so, or is the strategy now one that is more focused upon growing customer take-up (commercialisation)?
Jarlath Finnegan said:
We are absolutely pushing to accelerate full fibre delivery. But this is not a build strategy: we are a wholesaler offering amazing service experiences to our customers. Our strategy to develop aquila was based on the needs of B2C and B2B ISPs. We aim to raise the standard in the market in partnership with our network partners CityFibre and Openreach, and our own APFN network. We have also made aquila network agnostic, so this allows us to get to an individual premise in the most cost-effective way and so we continue to assess the market opportunities. Enabling our customers to increase take up with the lowest cost to serve is where our focus is.
We work, day in day out, with our partners (which includes our own APFN network team) to push the boundaries of what is possible in this area as we believe in competition which will ultimately benefit the consumer. However, we do not support excessive overbuild as it’s a poor use of capital and will impact the attractiveness of the sector.
4. In a climate where consolidation seems to have become the talk of the town. Does APFN see itself more as being an attractive prospect for being consolidated by a bigger fish, or are you likely to focus on remaining independent, while potentially raising fresh investment as interest rates come down – perhaps even doing a little consolidation of your own?
Jarlath Finnegan said:
It’s clear the market will consolidate but there will be different levels on how this happens across assets and customers. It’s inevitable that some of the fibre investments that have been made will fail, but we have seen some good examples of what is possible. For example, I was interested to see the announcement of the recent CityFibre / Lit Fibre deal, with the ISP going back to the founders. This is really good business for all, including the end consumer. We will always be active in the market but like aquila it must be something different with realistic expectations. This is a long but exciting game!
5. The country recently welcomed a new government, which over the past few months has been sending some mixed signals. On the one hand we’ve seen various tax rises in the budget (increasing costs in certain areas), while on the other there’s been talk about making a “renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030” and unblocking planning.
How do you think the new government is doing, with respect to supporting altnets like APFN on this front, and what more would you like to see them do?
Jarlath Finnegan said:
When a government wins a landslide, expectations are always high across the board that they will bring in sweeping positive change, for everyone. And of course, we know that, with every decision a government makes, there must be winners and losers. The recent budget is certainly a case in point in that regard.
We will always want the government to do more but at the end of the day it’s business that creates jobs and wealth, so we must get on with it and they can hopefully support us. But we will always need to move first.
We have been talking about 5G for a long time now and when you compare it to the fibre roll out it hasn’t kept up. In the early stages of the fibre rollout, the industry set to work and just got on with the task in hand of building out, but we are not done yet and now we need to push for ubiquitous coverage which will need both fixed and wireless over the next 7 to 10 years along with government support to ensure the digital economy can thrive. Look at what we have achieved in 5 years!
Please flick over to Page 2 in order to finish reading the interview.