Upp Broadband. Who are they?
Discussion
I have seen a lot of, what to me appear to be start up companies go from nothing to being everywhere is a very short space of time. such as Cazoo, Lightspeed Broadband, CBRE Group and in this case of this thread Upp Broadband, as a few examples.
From what I can tell, they are a company that is going to bring full fibre broadband to East Anglia, from Peterborough, Stamford & Oakham in the West, all he way to Diss & Ipswich in the East. They seem to have vans everywhere around here and are installing infrastructure at a staggering rate.
Yet, when I look at Companies House, they were first incorporated on the 4th February 2020 as Fibre Me Ltd with a statement of capital of £100. They changed their name to Upp Corporation Limited on the 1th June 2021.
The only accounts they have submitted were submitted on the 12th October 2021 that were for the dormant Fibre Me Ltd and showed the same statement of capital as £100. Their accounts for 2022 are well overdue.
They currently have 13 directors and have their registered address is opposite the Ritz hotel in Mayfair.
They appear to be owned by L1T FM Holdings, which in turn appears to be owned by two Russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, who have been ordered by the UK Government to sell it.
WTAF is going on here...
BTW, this started off as idle curiosity as to where this Upp company had suddenly appeared from, I expected to find they were an old company, that had rebranded and experienced a lot of growth in a short time, it seems not.
From what I can tell, they are a company that is going to bring full fibre broadband to East Anglia, from Peterborough, Stamford & Oakham in the West, all he way to Diss & Ipswich in the East. They seem to have vans everywhere around here and are installing infrastructure at a staggering rate.
Yet, when I look at Companies House, they were first incorporated on the 4th February 2020 as Fibre Me Ltd with a statement of capital of £100. They changed their name to Upp Corporation Limited on the 1th June 2021.
The only accounts they have submitted were submitted on the 12th October 2021 that were for the dormant Fibre Me Ltd and showed the same statement of capital as £100. Their accounts for 2022 are well overdue.
They currently have 13 directors and have their registered address is opposite the Ritz hotel in Mayfair.
They appear to be owned by L1T FM Holdings, which in turn appears to be owned by two Russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, who have been ordered by the UK Government to sell it.
WTAF is going on here...
BTW, this started off as idle curiosity as to where this Upp company had suddenly appeared from, I expected to find they were an old company, that had rebranded and experienced a lot of growth in a short time, it seems not.
There seems to be plenty of newly established businesses with many millions in cash to sink into building out fibre networks. I’ve worked in the industry a long time and I cannot see how they will ever recoup their initial investment unless they amortising the networks over an unrealistic period like 50 years or, as I suspect is more likely, think they can build the networks and sell them on to one of the larger carriers.
The largest players like Cityfibre I can perhaps see being of interest for acquisition - I suspect Vodafone will buy them at some point, but these relatively small local networks are all built to different standards with different kit - it would be nightmare to aggregate these into a larger network and operate it reliably and cost effectively. A lot of the recent build work I’ve seen is of questionable quality - the demand of for installers has massively outstripped supply and as such people are having to take on anyone who can operate a spade or pneumatic drill.
Looking at the accounts of one company that has donated generously to MP’s and describes their network as full fibre but use low end wireless kit to connect to the premesis - the balance sheet value they’re placing on their built network is absolutely crazy. I reckon it’s well over 20 times what it’s cost them to build it, and it’s largely badly installed overhead that nobody sensible would want to give the money back for, let alone a profit. I reckon they’ve valued it based on what a properly built underground ducted fibre network might be worth per metre. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if these companies are used as sinks for dodgy money - but I can’t work out how they get a return unless it’s a just long money laundering operation and they’re not bothered about return in the normal sense.
The biggest issue I see is that Openreach will have built out a pretty ubiquitous fibre network built out over the next 10 years or so, so the market for these altnets is ever reducing as ISP services are very much a volume play so the big Openreach users like Sky, Talktalk, Vodafone etc will be reaching more and more customers - their volumes and levels of automation will allow them to service customers at lower cost even if they have to pay Openreach a bit more for their tail connections. They’re picking off the high volume low hanging fruit today, but in the longer term it will be massively in Openreach interest to operate a full fibre network as it’ll be so much cheaper run due to fewer faults and will only need 20% of the exchange footprint - they plan to vacate about 4000 exchanges in the 2030’s which will liberate a massive amount of capital for them to fund their build in areas that are not currently commercially viable. Perversely Openreach love the altnets building out because it gives them ammo to get Ofcom off their back because they are less of a monopoly and so will not be as tightly regulated as they have been.
The largest players like Cityfibre I can perhaps see being of interest for acquisition - I suspect Vodafone will buy them at some point, but these relatively small local networks are all built to different standards with different kit - it would be nightmare to aggregate these into a larger network and operate it reliably and cost effectively. A lot of the recent build work I’ve seen is of questionable quality - the demand of for installers has massively outstripped supply and as such people are having to take on anyone who can operate a spade or pneumatic drill.
Looking at the accounts of one company that has donated generously to MP’s and describes their network as full fibre but use low end wireless kit to connect to the premesis - the balance sheet value they’re placing on their built network is absolutely crazy. I reckon it’s well over 20 times what it’s cost them to build it, and it’s largely badly installed overhead that nobody sensible would want to give the money back for, let alone a profit. I reckon they’ve valued it based on what a properly built underground ducted fibre network might be worth per metre. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if these companies are used as sinks for dodgy money - but I can’t work out how they get a return unless it’s a just long money laundering operation and they’re not bothered about return in the normal sense.
The biggest issue I see is that Openreach will have built out a pretty ubiquitous fibre network built out over the next 10 years or so, so the market for these altnets is ever reducing as ISP services are very much a volume play so the big Openreach users like Sky, Talktalk, Vodafone etc will be reaching more and more customers - their volumes and levels of automation will allow them to service customers at lower cost even if they have to pay Openreach a bit more for their tail connections. They’re picking off the high volume low hanging fruit today, but in the longer term it will be massively in Openreach interest to operate a full fibre network as it’ll be so much cheaper run due to fewer faults and will only need 20% of the exchange footprint - they plan to vacate about 4000 exchanges in the 2030’s which will liberate a massive amount of capital for them to fund their build in areas that are not currently commercially viable. Perversely Openreach love the altnets building out because it gives them ammo to get Ofcom off their back because they are less of a monopoly and so will not be as tightly regulated as they have been.
Megaflow said:
I have seen a lot of, what to me appear to be start up companies go from nothing to being everywhere is a very short space of time. such as Cazoo, Lightspeed Broadband, CBRE Group and in this case of this thread Upp Broadband, as a few examples.
The same CBRE group that was founded in 1906?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBRE_Group
quinny100 said:
There seems to be plenty of newly established businesses with many millions in cash to sink into building out fibre networks. I’ve worked in the industry a long time and I cannot see how they will ever recoup their initial investment unless they amortising the networks over an unrealistic period like 50 years or, as I suspect is more likely, think they can build the networks and sell them on to one of the larger carriers.
The largest players like Cityfibre I can perhaps see being of interest for acquisition - I suspect Vodafone will buy them at some point, but these relatively small local networks are all built to different standards with different kit - it would be nightmare to aggregate these into a larger network and operate it reliably and cost effectively. A lot of the recent build work I’ve seen is of questionable quality - the demand of for installers has massively outstripped supply and as such people are having to take on anyone who can operate a spade or pneumatic drill.
Looking at the accounts of one company that has donated generously to MP’s and describes their network as full fibre but use low end wireless kit to connect to the premesis - the balance sheet value they’re placing on their built network is absolutely crazy. I reckon it’s well over 20 times what it’s cost them to build it, and it’s largely badly installed overhead that nobody sensible would want to give the money back for, let alone a profit. I reckon they’ve valued it based on what a properly built underground ducted fibre network might be worth per metre. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if these companies are used as sinks for dodgy money - but I can’t work out how they get a return unless it’s a just long money laundering operation and they’re not bothered about return in the normal sense.
The biggest issue I see is that Openreach will have built out a pretty ubiquitous fibre network built out over the next 10 years or so, so the market for these altnets is ever reducing as ISP services are very much a volume play so the big Openreach users like Sky, Talktalk, Vodafone etc will be reaching more and more customers - their volumes and levels of automation will allow them to service customers at lower cost even if they have to pay Openreach a bit more for their tail connections. They’re picking off the high volume low hanging fruit today, but in the longer term it will be massively in Openreach interest to operate a full fibre network as it’ll be so much cheaper run due to fewer faults and will only need 20% of the exchange footprint - they plan to vacate about 4000 exchanges in the 2030’s which will liberate a massive amount of capital for them to fund their build in areas that are not currently commercially viable. Perversely Openreach love the altnets building out because it gives them ammo to get Ofcom off their back because they are less of a monopoly and so will not be as tightly regulated as they have been.
Interesting to hear from someone in the industry who reckons it is as shady as. The dodgy money aspect did occur to me as well.The largest players like Cityfibre I can perhaps see being of interest for acquisition - I suspect Vodafone will buy them at some point, but these relatively small local networks are all built to different standards with different kit - it would be nightmare to aggregate these into a larger network and operate it reliably and cost effectively. A lot of the recent build work I’ve seen is of questionable quality - the demand of for installers has massively outstripped supply and as such people are having to take on anyone who can operate a spade or pneumatic drill.
Looking at the accounts of one company that has donated generously to MP’s and describes their network as full fibre but use low end wireless kit to connect to the premesis - the balance sheet value they’re placing on their built network is absolutely crazy. I reckon it’s well over 20 times what it’s cost them to build it, and it’s largely badly installed overhead that nobody sensible would want to give the money back for, let alone a profit. I reckon they’ve valued it based on what a properly built underground ducted fibre network might be worth per metre. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if these companies are used as sinks for dodgy money - but I can’t work out how they get a return unless it’s a just long money laundering operation and they’re not bothered about return in the normal sense.
The biggest issue I see is that Openreach will have built out a pretty ubiquitous fibre network built out over the next 10 years or so, so the market for these altnets is ever reducing as ISP services are very much a volume play so the big Openreach users like Sky, Talktalk, Vodafone etc will be reaching more and more customers - their volumes and levels of automation will allow them to service customers at lower cost even if they have to pay Openreach a bit more for their tail connections. They’re picking off the high volume low hanging fruit today, but in the longer term it will be massively in Openreach interest to operate a full fibre network as it’ll be so much cheaper run due to fewer faults and will only need 20% of the exchange footprint - they plan to vacate about 4000 exchanges in the 2030’s which will liberate a massive amount of capital for them to fund their build in areas that are not currently commercially viable. Perversely Openreach love the altnets building out because it gives them ammo to get Ofcom off their back because they are less of a monopoly and so will not be as tightly regulated as they have been.
w1bbles said:
Megaflow said:
I have seen a lot of, what to me appear to be start up companies go from nothing to being everywhere is a very short space of time. such as Cazoo, Lightspeed Broadband, CBRE Group and in this case of this thread Upp Broadband, as a few examples.
The same CBRE group that was founded in 1906?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBRE_Group
Until last year when they plastered stickers all round the site at work, and then sponsored the six nations, I had never heard of them.
Edited by Megaflow on Monday 24th July 09:08
quinny100 said:
... interesting analysis...
I think people may have forgotten what happened to Telewest and NTL during the digital cable buildout. I'm not sure too many of the original investors/shareholders made money after Chapter 11, dilutions etc, and eventually it all got consolidated into a single entity. It's hard to make money in the UK by building out major infrastructure yourself. But no doubt "it's different this time, because..."Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff