Financial Times

NatWest and Lloyds are among the big banks braced for losses on billions of pounds in loans to troubled UK broadband providers, as the weakest players in the nascent fibre sector battle mounting financial pressure. Dozens of “altnets”—alternative network providers—have tried to challenge the dominance of BT’s Openreach and Virgin Media O2 but many are struggling to attract enough customers to meet the costs of their network rollout and have been hit by higher interest rates.