small fibre companies

As you may or may not know we are getting fibre in our small city in 2021/2022 by a company called Zzoomm, I have never heard of them before, and they are only in one other place and that is Henley-on-Thames. i noticed on the news page of this site of other small fibre providers, like County Broadband and Trooli. I was chatting to a mate last night, and we started talking about fibre and these small companies.
Now with the BT network, be it fibre, FTTC or ADSL even, if a provider you are with went belly up, it would not be a huge problem, it is still a problem but not a huge problem as the network is owned by BT, you just have to find yourself another provider.

If one of these smaller networks went belly up what would happen then? I know they may be kept going for a while until they find a buyer, but what if they don't find a buyer?

Then there is reliability, will they have the resources to cope if things go wrong?

My mate has better speed on FTTC than I have as he can go out of his front door and see the cabinet, so he is thinking the same as me, is it worth changing to Fibre?

You can look back at the old Wireless networks that were setup to get an idea of what could happen. A number of those ceased trading in the past and generally customers had to then go back to whatever else was available.

If nobody buys the company then your service would stop and you would have to go back to whatever is available. The government are always keen to encourage competitors like this but for the end customer it isn't always a benefit as they end up with only one choice which may be more expensive and could as you say cease trading for a variety of reasons. Whilst many don't like BT and Virgin having so much control there are benefits to large organisations running networks - especially as BT have to wholesale theirs to other providers.

In the end you probably need to look at the companies books on companies house. However, even if the company goes broke you should be able to return to FTTC and be no worse off than you are now. I wouldn't want to pay them loads of money up front for a service but if paying monthly then what do you lose compared to not signing up with them? You might be without broadband for a few weeks if the worst happened.

These small altnets are only going to get bigger by people signing up with them, as has already been said if they go under you can always go back to an ISP that uses the Openreach supported infrastructure. I don't know much about Zzoomm other than the ISP news here and on ISPReview.

Edited by dect (Tue 17-Nov-20 11:10:17)

In reply to a post by ian72:

If nobody buys the company then your service would stop and you would have to go back to whatever is available.

That's true, so nothing is lost. But in practise, I think this is unlikely to happen.

A real network in the ground, and a paying customer base to go with it, are both assets. Someone is going to want to buy them to accelerate the growth of their own network, if the price is right - and the liquidator will always sell rather than write the asset off.

Certainly you can expect to see consolidation of smaller players into larger ones, and some of these small players will be expecting that to happen.

In reply to a post by ian72:

even if the company goes broke you should be able to return to FTTC

except that a lot of the altnets are building in areas that don't have FTTC (e.g. Gigaclear). In those areas there is no OR superfast solution to fall back on. I do expect some altnets may fail, just what will happen remains to be seen...

There are so many springing up that it's almost certain many hope to be bought out in a few years . Will be a bit like the cable companies but perhaps without such huge debts.

I remember what it was like with a wireless network as I was with one for two years, but it did not go belly up, well not when i was with them, I left because the service they gave towards the end was pretty naff, they did not have the bandwidth to cope. I went to plusnet as by that time FTTC was here, but i did know someone who was still with the Wireless network when they stopped the service, the company itself is still going, but their market is payment systems, not broadband.
It was not a huge problem to change for them, but then the old ADSL system was still in place. I think now they have got FTTC.

i would not pay money up front, done that with Allpay wireless, not that It was a big amount, but still annoying considering the service only lasted for a couple of years.

In reply to a post by dect:

These small altnets are only going to get bigger by people signing up with them, as has already been said if they go under you can always go back to an ISP that uses the Openreach supported infrastructure. I don't know much about Zzoomm other than the ISP news here and on ISPReview.

I understand what you are saying, and they are all started from somewhere, and they have to build up their customers.
I am with plusnet for at least another 14 months anyway, my contract comes to the end in 2022, Myself I am not sure if I would want to go full fibre, well I suppose it depends on price. i have a good deal with plusnet at the moment and if they offer a good deal that is a fair bit below ZZOOMM price then i will stay with plusnet.
Zzoomm is £29 a month for the 100Mb/s according to their website, I am paying £23 a month for 35Mb/s with plusnet, may not seem a lot of difference, but it is £6 a month, ok, it may not seem a lot, but paying another £6 a month for something that is never going to be used to its full potential is a waste. I do that now with Netflix, which is why I am thinking of getting rid of it.
But if plusnet don't do me a decent deal i may change, depending on how much of a hassle it will be.

That is if I am still here and still have a job, lots of things can happen in 12 months, as this year have shwon.

Not much about Zzoomm on ISP review, apart from snippets of news, including them coming here.
Which is something I do not understand, why here?

My mate whom I was chatting to last night seems to think they have been given a load of money to come here. For what he pays for his broadband, which is 30 odd quid then for money alone going for Zzoom would be better for him, also he has 3 people in the house.
We will see

In reply to a post by sheephouse:

In reply to a post by ian72:

even if the company goes broke you should be able to return to FTTC

except that a lot of the altnets are building in areas that don't have FTTC (e.g. Gigaclear). In those areas there is no OR superfast solution to fall back on. I do expect some altnets may fail, just what will happen remains to be seen...

FTTC is here in most parts if not all the city, so it would not be a problem. The one thing I do dread is when they start laying the fibre, the traffic is bad enough as it is, it will be worse when they start closing roads off.

The number of places worth going where there either isnt already FTTP or planned to go live soon are getting fewer all the time.