A group of local independent Internet service providers (ISPs) have joined forces to put pressure on their own industry to help families pay for their broadband services amid the UK’s cost of living crisis.
Calling themselves the Rebel Alliance, the five-strong consortium is made up of fibre broadband providers from across the UK, who say more should be done to increase services levels and lower costs to avoid widening the country’s digital divide.
The founder members – Gigabit Networks, Triangle Networks, Air Broadband, Highnet and Trunk Networks – are demanding service levels and standards across the whole industry, and in particular greater support for those struggling with essential household bills.
And they say the country’s internet supplier industry should be driven by the needs of end-users, rather than by the competition between suppliers.
The Rebel Alliance is a five-strong consortium is made up of fibre broadband providers from across the UK.
The formation of the Rebel Alliance follows a slew of price increases for broadband at the start of April, with a number of big-name ISPs increasing prices for some customers by as much as 9.3%.
This increase came in the wake of rising food, energy, and fuel costs and figures from comms watchdog Ofcom, which found that although more than four million UK households are currently eligible for an average of a £144-a-year saving through internet firms’ social tariffs, only a small fraction have taken them up.
This is often because while some major internet service providers do offer tariffs for low incomes – and many do not – they are not generally advertised within their marketing materials and do not appear in price comparison site searches.
The Rebel Alliance says social tariffs should be better advertised and is also calling on the infrastructure providers who lay fibre cabling to demonstrate leadership and empathy, by making a greater financial contribution towards ensuring that affordable social internet pricing is made available to as many people as possible.
A group of local independent Internet service providers (ISPs) have joined forces to put pressure on their own industry to help families pay for their broadband services amid the UK’s cost of living crisis.
David Yates, CEO of Gigabit Networks, a founding member of the Rebel Alliance, said: “The ability to connect to the Internet is no longer a luxury but a necessity, simply because so many essential services, including applying for Universal Credit itself, take place online.
“Despite this, it seems like our industry still views being able to access fast and reliable internet as a consumer choice, with the quality of the internet you receive connected to your willingness and ability to pay.
“At a time of rising household costs across the board, we in the Rebel Alliance think that this is totally unacceptable and it is incumbent on the entire industry, which includes the infrastructure firms, to work together to increase internet affordability and make social tariffs readily available across the board to those who are eligible for them.”
All of the Rebel Alliance members offer Full-Fibre broadband services to premises (FFTP) in support of industry aims to roll out fibre connections to the whole of the UK by 2030.
David added: “Full-Fibre broadband Internet access is key to the future of this country but there is a very real prospect of having thousands of miles’ worth of brand-new fibre optic cabling running underground past the doorsteps of households who can’t afford to actually access it.
“We are already seeing it in the communities that we serve, where gigabit Internet, which would open up life-changing opportunities for people to work and study, is ready and waiting, but is too expensive for social housing residents and associations.
“UK infrastructure companies have done a great job of cabling, but they aren’t always thinking of the end-user experience. The Rebel Alliance is here to remind them that it’s the customers’ needs we are ultimately serving and that everybody has a right to fair and equitable access to a quality internet connection.”
ENDS
Highnet HighNet (www.highnet.com) has been delivering internet services to businesses across the UK since being founded in 1994, including a range of innovative voice and data solutions, gigabit internet access, hosted telephony, and mobile services, and launched BrawBand – a full fibre internet service to homes – in partnership with CityFibre last year.
It is currently connecting homes in Inverness, Glasgow and Renfrewshire in Scotland.
Air Broadband
Based near Cambridge, Air Broadband www.airbroadband.co.uk provide services to customers throughout the UK, including Bury St Edmunds, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Preston and Stoke. It is renowned for the quality of its customer support and also has a great range of low-cost voice and TV packages to run over the fibre.
Triangle Networks
Triangle Networks (www.trianglenetworks.co.uk) has been delivering internet services to businesses across the Midlands, South East and South West since 2004 and was CityFibre’s original business launch partner in Bristol in 2016.
This year it launched its Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) for homes service, FibreHop, and is currently rolling it out to Milton Keynes, Leicester, Swindon, Cheltenham and Gloucester, with new launches planned in Bath, Weston-super-Mare and Plymouth.
Trunk Networks
Trunk Networks (www.trunknetworks.com) works in partnership with CityFibre to deliver full fibre broadband to homes and businesses across Adur, Worthing, Eastbourne, Crawley, Horsham, Brighton & Hove and Chichester and Arun in the South-East of the UK, through its consumer broadband provider and Wi-Fi installation business No One Internet.
Gigabit Networks
Gigabit Networks – www.gigabitnetworks.co.uk – works in partnership with CityFibre to connect homes and businesses to Derby’s full-fibre network, which gives users near-limitless bandwidth and greater download speeds of up to 930 Mb per second. This year it also launched its FTTP service in Coventry.
For further information please contact Simon Burch at Penguin PR on 07735 397888 or email simon@penguinpr.co.uk
