Interview
Following rural ISP Quickline’s recent success in securing its fourth round of government funding earlier this month, Total Telecom sat down with CEO Sean Royce to discuss all things rural broadband
Founded in 2006, Quickline’s mission is to get rural communities connected “to a world of possibilities,” according to the website. The company is based in East Yorkshire and focuses on connecting local communities in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire with fixed wireless access and, more recently, full fibre technology.
The company today serves “more than half a million homes”, a figure which is set to increase quickly thanks to a new £250 million debt facility package secured earlier this month. The funding, which takes the form of a £125 million term loan, a £100 million debt guarantee, and a £25 million term loan provided by NatWest, will reportedly allow Quickline to expand its network to 190,000 additional locations.
“UKIB and NatWest, who we’ve done the deal with, they see the opportunity in rural areas – they see that these areas are being left behind,” explained Quickline CEO Sean Royce, who joined the company back in 2021. “They’re seeing an operator who was laser focused about trying to build where nobody else is building. And that’s really important point today in the UK.”
Royce joined the company as Managing Director in 2021, having spent over 30 years at Hull based ISP KCOM. In 1999, KCOM was floated on the stock exchange, and was the most successful float of that year, at the height of the dot com bubble. Royce oversaw KCOM’s completion of Hull’s whole fibre rollout, which remains the only city in the UK where full fibre is ubiquitously available.
A challenging broadband market
The new funding no doubt comes as welcome relief for Quickline in a market that has seen its purse strings tighten in recent years, following a surge of investment at the start of the decade.
“It is a very, very difficult sector right now. Sentiment is poor in the fibre sector particularly,” said Royce, noting that capital was much more available four years ago and investors less risk averse.
“Money was cheap and there was lots of it around […] There was this opportunity to build full fibre networks in the UK because the incumbent was distracted with BT support and buying EE. They won’t say that, but that’s exactly what they were doing!”
This positive financial environment saw the rise of over 100 altnets across the UK, which today serve roughly 2 million customers.
The boom of investment was not to last long, however. In the past two years, interest rates have soared and altnet investment has largely dried up as a result.
“Investors get nervous about returns in a market like that,” said Royce.
Full fibre and the rural divide
Today, around 65% of the UK has access to full fibre connectivity, a figure that is rising steadily thanks to the efforts of Openreach, Virgin Media O2, and the altnet community. The vast majority of these deployments are in population-dense urban areas where deploying infrastructure can be more cost effective. Rural areas, on the other hand, typically represent a far less appealing prospect for operators, with deployments being more expensive and logistically challenging for far fewer potential customers.
This lack of quality connectivity in small communities, Royce says, can be hugely detrimental, even resulting in their complete abandonment in some cases.
This is especially true for communities smaller than villages, such as tiny hamlets already lacking nearby access to services like GPs, banks, and public services.
“These little villages will wither and die, and we’re trying to regenerate the rural north of England. The first building that Quickline connected (in Escrick, North Yorkshire) did not even have mains gas!” joked Royce.
Deploying fibre under these conditions comes with a considerable number of challenges, from working on difficult terrain to the red tape associated with crossing privately owned land. This means Quickline’s build rate is never going to achieve the same speed as its more urban-focussed rivals – Openreach, for example, regularly passes 40,000 additional premises a week.
Nonetheless, Royce notes that progress remains steady, with Quickline expecting to pass between 500 to 1,000 rural premises a month.
Perhaps even more important is that, in 9 out of 10 of these locations passed, Quickline is the only provider to offer gigabit capable connectivity.
For Royce, this hints at a potential future for the broadband industry where – following considerable consolidation – the market is split into a small number of national players and rural broadband specialists.
Transforming communities beyond connectivity
Beyond simply rolling out broadband infrastructure to rural locations, a large part of Quickline’s business is engaging with and improving the communities they serve; in fact, Quickline has an internal team fully dedicated to this purpose. It has a company programme, aimed at supporting and sustaining rural communities by investing in their future. Named QFutures, it is focussed on three Es: education, enriching livelihoods, and the environment. It has brought over £13 million in social value to the two counties in which Quickline operates in the last year.
“It’s not just is a couple of apprenticeships and a few laptops,” Royce jokes. Earlier this month, for example, Quickline announced a £150,000 partnership with The Prince’s Trust, a charity founded by the King that supports young people facing challenges such as unemployment. Over the next three years, Quickline’s investment will support a range of programmes, equipping young people in South Yorkshire with digital skills to further their chances of employment.
The Road Ahead for Rural Connectivity
As the UK continues to grapple with the digital divide between urban and rural areas, Quickline is positioning itself as a critical player in bridging that gap.
The future of rural connectivity will depend on a combination of continued investment from both public and private sectors, technological innovation, and strategic partnerships across the industry. As these dynamics evolve, the extent to which rural areas can keep pace with their urban counterparts will be a key factor in shaping the UK’s digital landscape.
Join Sean Royce speaking on the ‘Customer uptake’ panel at this year’s Connected Britain, 11-12 September in London. Tickets are available here.