FROM THE INDUSTRY
We’ll get 20% of all the customers in that area and businesses to sign up. They built like crazy, but what they weren’t doing is making customer connections. Three years down the line, the banks are saying, ‘I’m looking at your business plan. You say you want some more money, you said that you’d actually get a 20% pickup in that area, but it looks like you’ve only got three, four, maybe 5%, so we are not going to give you any more cash until you’ve actually made customer connections.’ So at the moment, the whole industry is concentrating on making customer connections, the customer service angle. They’re not building anymore, they’re not building out into new areas. All they’re doing is they’re banging on doors. As a result, there is consolidation in the marketplace. I think there may be quite a few casualties as we go through this year. That’s quite often the case, in a new industry that no one really saw coming. There’s no roadmap for it. Everything has a peak, and I think we have peaked. And like you say, investment’s drying up, and it’s just the natural way that the market consolidates. It was very cluttered, 150 Altnets for a country this size. GERMANY HAS A FRACTION OF THAT. BUT THEN, THE UK IS KNOWN FOR BEING A NATION OF ENTREPRENEURS. That probably explains a lot of it. It was a massively interesting time though, and now people buy their properties based largely on, ‘Can I get fast broadband here?’ What overseas manufacturers do you rely on? We’ve got probably 30 different overseas suppliers, and we source from China and Taiwan, and recently we’ve actually been on trips to Vietnam and India. Because obviously if it all kicks off in China and Taiwan, if those two have a bit of a bust up, where do you go for the product? It could dry up overnight.
Any plans to retire? No. I think that would be the worst thing to do. I know so many people that get to that particular point and they go off and they haven’t really got a purpose. If you’re going to go off and you’re going to travel around the world and you want to see a lot of stuff and have a really active roadmap, I think that’s fine.
What’s your legacy?
To have this title of being the largest independent distributor of
telecommunication products in the UK, I think is pretty good. I get gratification from actually seeing a lot of the tools. We redesigned a lot of the tools. There were an awful lot of tools that were actually built for the old copper networks, which have now had to be developed for fibre; small changes, some of them a bit more involved. I love doing that engineering side of the business. But to actually see the products in use at the sides of the roads and see the name of Mills being used, and basically helping build the network, four generations later, over 100 years, I think is a great legacy. One of the things that I absolutely love seeing is just driving down the road and seeing one of the engineers at the side of one of these green cabinets and he’s sitting on a Mills’ stool and you can see the Mills’ logo. Congratulations Jerry on a stellar journey, and here’s to the next 100 years.
www.millsltd.com
MARCH 2024 Volume 46 No.1
33
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