First Utility Broadband

First Utility Broadband was the home internet service of First Utility, a Warwick-based energy challenger founded in 2008. The company had established itself as one of the more credible alternatives to the UK's dominant energy suppliers before it decided to add home broadband to its offer. The broadband product launched around 2016, bundled alongside gas and electricity, with the idea that customers could manage all their home utility costs from a single provider. The service ran until February 2018, when Shell acquired the entire First Utility business, and the broadband product was rebranded along with everything else as Shell Energy Broadband in March 2019.

First Utility as a company

First Utility was founded in 2008 by Mark Daeche, Darren Braham and Marcus Citron. It grew during the 2010s as one of the more successful independent energy suppliers in the UK, helped partly by the government's efforts to encourage competition in the energy market and by consumers' increasing willingness to switch away from the big six suppliers. By 2015 the company had added 275,000 customers in a single year and was considering expansion into Germany. It was valued at around £825 million at the time of Shell's acquisition.

The company's broadband entry fitted a pattern seen among other utility companies in the period: SSE, the Post Office and others had concluded that bundling broadband with energy was a practical way to deepen customer relationships and reduce churn. First Utility's broadband ran on the Openreach network (BT's infrastructure division, which owns the telephone exchanges and the copper and fibre connections to most UK homes), meaning it was technically identical in delivery to BT, Sky and TalkTalk products over the same lines.

What First Utility Broadband offered

First Utility offered ADSL (the older copper telephone line broadband technology, typically delivering speeds up to 17Mbps) and FTTC fibre packages (Fibre to the Cabinet, where fibre runs to a street cabinet before the remaining connection to the home uses copper, offering speeds up to 76Mbps). The service was sold as a complement to an existing First Utility energy package, with the proposition being the simplicity of a single bill for utilities. Pricing was competitive.

The company received a significant volume of customer complaints in 2014 and 2015 as customer growth outpaced its ability to service accounts. Those complaints related primarily to energy billing rather than the broadband product. Ofgem (the energy regulator) had also issued First Utility with a disciplinary order in December 2010 for failing to protect vulnerable customers. The energy business had its share of regulatory friction, but the broadband service was not specifically identified as a problem area in the regulatory record.

The Shell acquisition and rebrand

Shell plc announced its intention to acquire First Utility in December 2017. The deal completed on 28 February 2018. For Shell, the acquisition was a deliberate entry into UK domestic energy retail, part of its New Energies strategy. The broadband product was included in the acquisition but was secondary to Shell's interest in the energy customer base. Both Shell and First Utility said customers would see no changes to their tariffs or service as a result of the acquisition.

In March 2019, Shell completed the rebrand of First Utility to Shell Energy. All customers, including those on the broadband product, were moved to the Shell Energy name. The bank statements and billing documents of First Utility broadband customers changed to show Shell Energy instead of First Utility; the service itself continued unchanged. The First Utility name ceased trading at that point.

In summary

First Utility Broadband was a short-lived service by the standards of UK broadband providers. It existed for around two to three years under its original name before a corporate acquisition turned it into something else. The customers it served were generally well-served: the Openreach infrastructure was reliable, the pricing was competitive and the proposition of a single utility bill was straightforward. Its closure as a named service was entirely the product of Shell's decision to present a unified brand, not of any failure in the broadband product itself. The customers who joined First Utility for broadband found themselves on Shell Energy Broadband in 2019 and, eventually, on TalkTalk after Shell exited the market in 2023 and 2024.