Avonline Networks Confirm 5 Year Ogi FTTP Rollout Deal in Wales

Civil engineering firm Avonline Networks has today confirmed what we revealed back in June (here), which is that they have secured a 5-year contract to help UK ISP Ogi (formerly Spectrum Internet) rollout a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband service across South East Wales. But we do get a bit more detail.

Just to recap. Ogi’s £200m investment plan, which is backed by Infracapital, is to reach 150,000 premises across South Wales by late 2025. A number of other contractors have also secured delivery contracts to support this, including O’Conner Utilities in Central South Wales and Network Plus in South West Wales.

The news today gives us a bit more detail on Avonline’s (M Group Services) specific rollout focus in the South East of Wales. Under the terms of the £25m agreement, the contractor will be required to deliver full fibre network connectivity to 52,000 homes and businesses in the region.

Work is already underway to bring full fibre broadband to the town of Abergavenny, making it amongst the first communities in Wales to benefit from Ogi’s new network.

Neil Harris, Head of Build (Ogi) at Avonline, said:

“We’re totally committed to helping every Welsh community build back better. Everyone prospers when brilliant broadband delivers real opportunities, resilience and sustainability, and we have big ambitions to see Wales flourish.

We are delighted to have secured this contract award that will draw on our extensive full fibre network build and installation experience and capabilities. We look forward to collaborating with Ogi on this exciting five-year programme that will deliver a significantly enhanced broadband service for people and businesses across the region.”

Speaking of Ogi, the ISP recently informed us that they expected to unveil a range of related on-net home broadband packages for the new network sometime this month (the speeds tiers for this will be 150Mbps, 300Mbps and 900Mbps). As before, they will also be selling Openreach based FTTP (off-net), albeit only in areas where that is both available, and they have unbundled the local exchange (better for capacity and keeps pricing competitive).

In the future this rollout may also extend to other parts of Wales and cover 350,000 premises, but that has yet to be finalised.