WightFibre Gobbles Wireless ISP Click4Internet on the Isle of Wight

Cable operator WightFibre, which focuses on delivering ultrafast broadband services across the Isle of Wight that resides just off the central south coast of England (Hampshire), has announced the purchase of rival fixed wireless ISP Click4Internet for an undisclosed sum.

The details are a little thin, but WightFibre says they intend to use the new acquisition in order to expand their superfast broadband services “to the whole of the Isle of Wight“, including a few parts of the mainland in Hampshire where Click4Internet also had some coverage.

John Irvine, WightFibre CEO, said:

“This move is recognition of the issue faced by many across our Island and reflects the importance we place on focusing on ways to improve rural connectivity beyond where it is today.”

Frazer Munro, Click4Internet’s Managing Director, said:

“Click4Internet has been providing service to large areas of the island who have been poorly served by BT. With over 500 homes and businesses on our network we had reached a point where we needed help to accelerate the development and take up of our services. WightFibre will be able to deliver this. We feel we are leaving our existing network and customers in very capable hands.”

Apparently customers on Click4Internet’s network can expect to benefit from various upgrades “over the coming months“, which will make superfast speeds available and add new phone and TV options. However it’s worth pointing out that the ISPs existing service was already claiming to offer top speeds of 30Mbps to home users (details). Crucially Click4Internet’s coverage often focused on the more rural parts of the island, where both BT and WightFibre may have struggled to deliver a good service.

But there is a contradiction in the announcement, with WightFibre claiming on one hand that the deal “enables the company to now extend its superfast broadband coverage to the whole of the Isle of Wight” and then on the other saying later in the same update that “this latest move … ensures that, in total, over 90% of the Island can now enjoy superfast speeds.”

Meanwhile the local Broadband Delivery UK based programme is currently in the process of expanding BT’s “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to an additional 20,000 premises, which is on top of the 50,000 or so that they can already reach.. much to the dismay of WightFibre.

The entire BDUK project is targeted to complete this month and at the last update in July 2015 they had finished some 15,697 of the total.