Infracapital-backed ISP Fibrus, which is busy rolling out their alternative gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across rural parts of Cumbria (England) and Northern Ireland, has confirmed another round of redundancies as their roll-out in N.Ireland comes to an end. But new jobs in customer facing roles are expected to be created.
Just to recap. The operator has already built their full fibre network to cover 400,000 UK premises and have previously claimed to be “fully funded to complete” their roll-out plan for 500,000 premises in the near future (here). In November 2024 they also passed the 100,000th customer mark (here).
However, while their deployment in Cumbria still has a long way to go, Fibrus’ build in Northern Ireland is getting closer to completion and this will inevitably mean a loss of further engineering roles. Not to mention that the company is also having to deal with a pre-tax loss of nearly £60m in its latest accounts (here).
According to the Belfast Telegraph, around 48 jobs could be cut in their civil engineering company, Vibreoptix, which would be on top of those that were lost at the start of last year (here). The latter was also partly due to the fact that network operators across the market are being placed under a lot of strain, not least due to issues like rising build costs (inflation, leases, suppliers etc.) and the difficulty in raising fresh investment during a period of high interest rates.
A Fibrus spokesperson said:
“Fibrus is nearing the completion of its planned build programme in Northern Ireland. We have restructured our teams to support our business priorities and enable the next phase of growth.
We have hired, and will continue to hire, customer-focused roles in line with business expansion plans.”
Put another way, Fibrus, like many other altnets, is now increasingly focusing their efforts on growing the take-up (commercialisation) of the infrastructure they’ve already built. The operator’s most recent accounts also reported a 58% increase in revenues to £17.6m and a record-breaking year for customer growth, including a 143% increase in connected customers, which grew by 46k during the year from 32k to 78k and have passed the 100k milestone subsequent to year end. Customer penetration now exceeds 25%.