Box Broadband Bring 1Gbps FTTP to Surrey Village of Cranleigh UPDATE

New UK ISP Box Broadband has confirmed that the large rural village of Cranleigh in Surrey will be the next one to be reached by their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which has already started connecting homes and businesses in nearby Ewhurst, Walliswood and Ellen’s Green.

At a population of about 11,000 Cranleigh, which sits around 8 miles (13km) south east of Guildford, is many times larger than Box’s previous deployments (it’s one of the largest villages in the country) and will represent a significant challenge. On top of that it’s already quite well covered by Openreach’s significantly slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) services.

Box is a demand-led provider like Gigaclear and as such they’ve already started drumming up interest from the local community (the above picture is from last weekend’s Cranleigh Carnival), which will help them to determine their initial deployment plan for the village. Apparently they’re aiming to connect new customers in the “coming weeks.”

Box Broadband Progress Update

We are making great progress on our deployment for the Cranleigh areas as well as expanding our current network in Ewhurst, Walliswood and Ellens Green towards Cox Green areas as well. Construction is moving at a fast pace now and we will soon be able to connect many new customers in Cranleigh in the coming weeks.

This year, we have also launched our brand new VoIP telephone service to complement our hyper-fast broadband. For a fixed price with no line rental, our telephone service includes standard anytime UK landline and mobile calls, and offers many convenient features such as mobile calling, voicemail transcription and email to fax reception as well as business-grade IVR menus for our business customers as well.

Customers of the new symmetric speed service can expect unlimited usage, an 18 month minimum contract term, included wireless router and installation costs start from around £149.99. Packages cost from £29.95 inc. VAT per month for a 50Mbps plan and go up to £59.95 for a 1Gbps connection.

The ISP has previously indicated that they want to cater for larger Multi-Dwelling Units (apartment blocks) and could make their network open access to other ISPs. On top of that they have an aim to cover more than 100,000 homes within the next 4 years (by 2023).

The provider may also make some strategic use of Openreach’s Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product (i.e. using existing cable ducts to run fibre), at least in areas where doing so makes sense.

UPDATE 2nd July 2019

Correction to the above. Box says they plan to cover 100,000 premises not 10,000.