Explore Map Group’s strategic partnerships and vision to connect the UK with ultrafast broadband
A year after our last interview with Mike Carlin, CEO at Map Group (Map), we catch up with his son, Matty Carlin, the company’s Strategy and Development Director. Matty begins by providing a brief overview of Map’s services as a refresher, which include network planning and design, surveying, network build, civils, residential installations, and everything in between. “We primarily conduct surveys for our clients to verify the buildability of the networks they have designed. This involves surveying the entire network, from the exchange all the way to the house or its boundary, inspecting ducts, highways, and roads. If we notice any network blockages, we can undertake civil engineering work, such as minor digs within highways, either dispatching our own team or subcontract partners that will do it on our behalf. Additionally, we can conduct major civil engineering work, including extensive physical excavation along highways. Once these works are completed, our team fibres the network from the exchange up to the last joint before the house’s entrance,” he opens.
Employee ownership 
During our previous conversation with Mike, we discovered that he was in the process of selling his Map shares into an Employee Ownership Trust. Since then, there have been developments in this area, as Matty explains: “At the end of 2023, we officially completed the sale of 51 per cent of my father’s shares into the Employee Ownership Trust. As a result, our employees currently own a part of the business whilst continuing their employment with Map. Should we ever sell the company, our employees would receive a share of the sale as well. The primary reason for this decision was our desire to express gratitude to our employees for their loyalty and hard work over the last 30 years. The Employee Ownership Trust was the ideal way to give back to them for their dedication. Whilst we finalised the process several months ago, we did not launch it properly until June 2024. Now, everyone in the business is aware of it and is excited about this, especially considering the added job security it provides in the face of such uncertain times.”
New partnerships
Matty seizes this opportunity to discuss Map’s data centre building projects, which he oversees alongside his father. “Despite being a separate endeavour from what we typically do at Map, it is a part of our business that we are continuously developing. Lately, we have made considerable progress, taking our data centre building business to the next level. Our work involves sourcing land and obtaining all the necessary planning permissions to ultimately build data centres across the UK, with plans for future expansion abroad as well. It is a slow process, but over the last year, we have purchased various land parcels throughout the country and are now in the final planning stages for a large site in Wales. The tremendous growth of our data centre building business has been an exciting prospect, and we are looking forward to seeing how far it can go, potentially surpassing the scale of our current operations within Map,” he elaborates.
Shifting the discussion to more recent topics, Matty delves into residential installation projects Map is currently involved in for YouFibre and Voneus. “In the Northeast of England, we have been contracted for completing residential installations of ultrafast broadband for YouFibre, Netomnia’s sister company, completing circa 30,000 residential installs. Over the past few years, the number of homes we connect has increased by a staggering 19 per cent, having completed 8000 homes from January to June 2023 and 9500 for the same period this year.
“On the other hand, Voneus is a fairly new client for us, as we started collaborating around February 2024. While our relationship is still in its early stages, it is set to be similar to the one we have with YouFibre, since our role will consist in undertaking residential installations. We are contracted by Voneus to operate in a broader geographical area than we do for YouFibre, with projects in the Northeast, in Oxfordshire and its surrounding regions, and in Cumbria, where we have already started working on various installations. At the moment, we are heavily focused on the hardware aspect of the job for Voneus, as we aim to prove ourselves and our competencies. In the coming months, we are hoping to move beyond this infancy phase of our partnership and start doing more work for Voneus,” he enlightens.
Better connected
Although these partnerships are sure to keep Map busy for a while, Matty reveals what Construction & Civil Engineering readers can expect from the company for the remainder of this year. “For us, that will be all about maintaining the growth we have experienced over the last four-to-five years in the industry. Some key areas we are particularly eager to get more involved in is the residential installation side of the business, as well as the maintenance of the networks. These are the core areas where we see ourselves prospering in the future,” he goes on.
Looking beyond this short-term outlook, Matty has ambitious aspirations for the longer-term future of the company, hinting at some new ventures to potentially explore within the next five years. “In the future, we might explore opportunities in other industries, but for now, we believe there is still a lot of work to be done in the UK’s telecoms industry. Moreover, we could hypothetically expand into Europe, as its network build is lagging behind the UK, though there are no concrete plans to do so at the moment,” he concludes.
By meaningfully demonstrating loyalty and devotion to its employees, and forming strategic partnerships, Map is better equipped to empower connectivity across the UK. Its renewed focus on residential installations and network maintenance positions the company to continue providing reliable communications infrastructure for many years to come.