UK urban fibre builders rack up customers and coverage

Hyperoptic now has 300,000 fibre broadband customers in the UK, a milestone it announced just hours after Community Fibre declared that its network now covers over 1 million homes.

Hyperoptic said its network now passes more than 1.4 million homes in 64 towns and cities across the UK. The new figures put it closer to its goal of reaching half a million customers from 2 million homes passed.

The operator reiterated that target in its announcement without sharing a date, a move that always leads to a bit of digging. The company has previously disclosed that it aims to reach the 2 million mark – in coverage terms – by the end of this year, so one can’t help but wonder why the end-2023 part is now missing. But maybe that’s reading too far between the lines.

The operator is keen to use its latest customer milestone as a platform on which to position itself as a customer experience champion, something that has always been core to its strategy, to be fair. Hyperoptic unveiled a new brand campaign a month ago, dubbed In Your Corner, and accompanied the launch with a raft of statistics designed to show just how dissatisfied UK broadband customers are with their current providers.

According to Hyperoptic’s research, almost 30% of UK consumers feel dread or frustration at the mere thought of trying to get hold of a real person at their broadband company. Nearly 40% of those unhappy with the service they are receiving said it was difficult to speak to an actual person and similar number said they were passed from pillar to post when they did get through. However, there’s a lot of inertia when it comes to switching, with only 5% of those customers saying they were in the process of moving provider and 23% having never switched provider.

Hence the reason for the Hyperoptic campaign, presumably; to encourage UK consumers to jump through the hoops required to get a new broadband provider.

It’s really too soon to tell whether that strategy has worked for the company, but it clearly is attracting new users. It has added around 70,000 customers in the past 18 or so months, incidentally.

Hyperoptic started off by connecting multi-dwelling units in London’s Wandsworth more than a decade ago, but has now expanded its focus to add new build developments and residential street in densely-populated areas to its footprint. With new builds seemingly popping up at a rate of knots in the UK, the operator has a decent growth opportunity in front of it.

Meanwhile, another UK fibre builder with its roots in London announced a milestone of its own. Earlier this week Community Fibre revealed that its network now covers more than 1 million London properties and also took the opportunity to talk up its own benefits versus the establishment: affordability and customer service, in this case.

“As well as advancing our network build to more properties and businesses across the capital, we will continue to challenge the industry with our innovative offerings, such as setting new out-of-contract pricing standards, which we have capped at £2 across all our packages, as well as providing easy access to our social tariff, which remains the only social tariff product on the market today which does not ask consumers to provide proof of eligibility,” said Community Fibre CEO Graeme Oxby, ticking a lot of hot topic boxes in just one sentence.

All in all, this pair of announcements is good news for the UK fibre industry and for consumers. Or for those that live in the capital and other densely-populated areas, at least.

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