FROM THE INDUSTRY
That’s extraordinary. And you did all this with just three people? Eddie in Cambridge, Ian in Scotland and me in the Peak District. We realised we’d been working together nearly 10 years before we’d all been in the same room at the same time!
rather than it being a squabbling exercise. It’s all about identifying big market problems we can address with data and high-level analysis. Any final thoughts? Just that I’ve never really had any sort of plan for my career, even my life. But it’s been a fascinating journey. Life has thrown a few opportunities my way, and I’ve tried to make the most of them – from splicing my first fibre in 1987 to shaping how the growing independent broadband sector gets funded and rolled out across the UK. I don’t plan to run any more marathons, but I’m still growing potatoes.
coast when Bill Murphy from BT called me. Very direct American guy. He said: “You’re the only person in the country who understands how to do this. Would you call BDUK and tell them what to do?” That’s quite a phone call. Bill emailed me the contact details, and I emailed BDUK on Thursday morning at 7am. They instantly replied asking if I was in London the next day. I gave them an hour and a half briefing on how to make the broadband funding work. Let’s just say, there were a few issues between BDUK and DEFRA that needed to be sorted out. The Superconnected Cities voucher programme – that was your idea? I don’t imagine I was the only person who thought of it, but when state aid approval for Birmingham was challenged and chucked out, I realised the only way to get cash out fast enough was vouchers. That programme became the start of all the broadband voucher programmes since 2012. How did vouchers help in this scenario? The main superfast programme had been awarded to a framework of one operator – BT. But the superconnected cities and rural voucher schemes allowed the independent operators to access government funding that meant they could scale up their deployment capabilities. GreySky worked with a few of the independent operators to access voucher funding, we also worked on the R100 programme in Scotland and Project Stratum in Northern Ireland. Then Project Gigabit came along? We’d been refining our capability to design detailed network models very quickly using the Setics Sttar high-level design programme. When Project Gigabit launched, we worked with operators on their funding models and applications. We got 13 wins and secured just over £500 million for our clients.
Of course, much of this happened during COVID?
The month before the pandemic, I could see in my Google report that I’d been to all four UK nations, from the top of Scotland to Cornwall. Then Google started sending me pictures of Sainsbury’s for three months straight. I went from 40,000 business miles and £30,000 travel expenses to £200 on a Zoom licence. All our clients had been sent home and didn’t know what to do, so they thought: let’s start that GreySky project. We were working up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week for over two years. That must have been tough mentally. Ian and I both got a bit agoraphobic. I live alone, work from home, and suddenly all human contact was online only. It was physically and mentally tough, but a once- in-a-career opportunity. Even clients were saying we needed to rest, but then another project would start. You sound remarkably agile – bouncing between industries and skill sets seemingly effortlessly. There’s been an awful lot of luck in it. But I’ve always been quite fearless – I literally don’t get frightened. I just think: if anyone can do this, why can’t I?
www.greysky.co.uk
James is a Corporate Member of the SCTE and moderator. GreySky specialises in broadband network design, funding applications and commercial due diligence. And potatoes.
What’s next for Greysky?
We’re hoping to take the technical capability we developed for BDUK funding applications and apply it to commercial due diligence and the mergers and acquisitions we know are coming. We can bring proper data processing to compare company values on a level playing field,
Volume 47 No.4 DECEMBER 2025
45
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker