Interview
With the fibre ‘land grabbing’ largely complete, altnets are doubling down on efficiency
At Connected Britain this year, there was much talk of the inevitability of alnet consolidation and the shift in focus away from network deployment towards customer uptake.
Speaking at the event, F&W Networks chairman Carlos Bock described the initial altnet boom as ‘almost a land grabbing exercise’, suggesting that they could have worked harder to connect customers as they went.
“I think we [as an industry] could have done better to try to correlate our rollouts with the connection of subscribers,” said Bock. “This alternative […] would maybe have been more efficient, but also more fragmented. I’m not sure it would have put us in a better position than we are today.”
Now, in need of proven returns, the industry is focussed much more heavily on efficiency, both in their continued build out and ongoing operations.
“It’s about optimising every single aspect of the delivery chain for capital efficiency and the operational chain for operational efficiency,” said Bock. “Both concepts are key; the first so you can build a large network and the second so you can become profitable more quickly.”
For F&W Networks, this capital efficiency has left them in a strong position for continued growth in a rapidly constricting market.
“We have a clear path to cash flow break even in 2026 and we’re starting talks with investors to expand and complete our existing footprint. The opportunity is still there,” concluded Bock.
Check out the full interview here!
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