WightFibre in Cowes provides superfast broadband, TV and telephone services to thousands of residential and business customers across the Island. Delivery speeds are increasing and the business is growing, as Tom Stroud discovers
“We’re one company, with one contract for all three services,” explains WightFibre’s CEO John Irvine. “Our only competition on the Island comes from the national players – BT, Sky and TalkTalk – and we can compete very effectively on price with them.” John’s team of 24 staff is based at their Network Operations Centre, a sort of “mission control” that contains a call centre, a warehouse for their installation engineers and also the “head end” of the cable network, joining them to the outside world via cross-Solent cables. John’s been running the company since 2012 and he’s overseen a rebrand and a re-connection with their residential and business customers.
“WightFibre was founded as the Isle of Wight Cable and Telephone Company in 2000,” John explains. “The company morphed into Wight Cable in 2005 and then two years ago we became WightFibre. We decided a change of brand was needed to emphasise the fact that from day one we have been fibre optic network.”
The company is certainly ambitious and has a new owner, Keith Young, whose background is in publishing and internet service provision. At its peak WightCable had over 7,000 customers on the Island. That number had dropped to below 4,000 at the start of 2012. In the last year the figures have risen again to almost 5,000 subscribers.
“I can talk about this a bit more openly now,” says John. “I was sent here by the then owners on a short term contract to either cut their losses and close the company down – or turn it around. I’m pleased to say we did turn it around. We’ve seen a lot about residential customers coming back to us after the rebrand. In the last 12 months we’ve grown by nearly 1000 subscribers and at this rate of growth our future is well and truly secured. We’d like to get to 10,000 subscribers across the whole island within the next 2 to 3 years. Having achieved that, the company has a business plan to replicate what we’ve done here in other rural areas around the UK.”
John quickly dismisses his national competitors’ marketing as “smoke and mirrors” and he’s tackling BT’s delivery speeds head-on. WightFibre has invested considerably in their network but there’s still a lot of ground to cover. The fibre optic network currently reaches 70% of the Island, with around half of that being served using wireless coverage. John says that this technology will ultimately allow them to cover the whole of the Isle of Wight.
“It’s very expensive to dig up the road and lay fibre at a cost of approximately £150 per metre. Wireless however is a very cost-effective technology for delivering services to out-of-the-way areas. Using Shalfleet as an example, to dig 10km to reach only 100 homes, the business case there is tough. So we’re using wireless radio masts to bridge the gap and get into the homes. We plan to dig up the road to Shalfleet in October and it’s a trial phase that will be completed by Christmas. We’ll then easily be able to reach Porchfield and Newtown and then dig further to Yarmouth and Freshwater. I expect we’ll then roll-out quite rapidly to most of the West Wight and to Ventnor during 2015.”
Bringing every location on the Island within reach of WightFibre’s network is one thing; a further challenge is to re-connect with the customers who have moved elsewhere.
“The message to the business community isn’t getting through,” John admits. “There’s a reluctance to engage with us and I recognise that the old company WightCable did let some of those customers down at the time. We’re a new company now, with new investment and a much faster network than before. Our technology is leading edge, including cloud based telephony services. We’re working on ‘the Island Cloud’ with PC Consultants and we’ve many more cloud services planned. My message to businesses would be to talk to us again and give us a chance to prove our worth.”
Pete Collinge runs the sales department. He’s recently re-joined the company and stresses that things have changed.
“The big difference is the network upgrade and its reliability. My absolute aim is to engage with the business community and our services are superb now. Our VOIP network offers so much more flexibility and cost-reduction from a business perspective. It’s a compelling argument and my job is to get that message out there. In 2007 the network wasn’t as reliable as it should have been and that explains this reticence to look at us. Now we run a superbly reliable network and I’m proud to be able to sell it to the business community.”
John agrees, noting that the core network “runs at 99.999%”, equating to only 7 minutes down time over an entire year. He confidently says that WightFibre is “here to stay”, even if right now he thinks the company is “still one of the Island’s best kept secrets.” John is focused on the job in hand and he’s philosophical about the future.
“I do think it has all gone much more slowly than I would have liked. For all the right reasons the pace of change on the Island is much slower and people take much longer to make decisions about things like changing their broadband. But you get there in the end. It’s all about building and earning trust and making those relationships work.”
First published in the September 2014 issue of Island Business magazine.
