ISP 1310 Building Own Gigabit FTTP Broadband in Hampshire UK
New UK ISP 1310 (pronounced thirteen-ten), which initially started life in 2018/19 by offering services via Openreach’s national platform, has informed ISPreview.co.uk that they’ve started to build their own trial Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network for homes and businesses in the Hampshire town of Farnborough.
The provider, which has previously unbundled exchanges in both Farnborough and Basingstoke, recently began harnessing Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles (Physical Infrastructure Access) in order to run their own GPON style fibre optic cable (i.e. cutting deployment costs and reducing the need for local street works).
“The first area we’ve brought live is the South Farnborough area and North Camp. We’ve put our own fibre in to all of the main roads and distribution in to several housing areas, including the woefully underserved Queensgate Estate. The customers we started bringing onboard last week are coming from a classic ADSL service, most of them on less than 10Mb,” said 1310’s CTO, Simon Green.
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The packages on offer for this are currently aligned to their existing pricing for Openreach’s products, which helps to avoid confusion. New customers can thus pay from £46.20 inc. VAT per month for their entry-level 100Mbps (18Mbps upload) tier, which rises to £86.40 for their top 500Mbps (70Mbps upload) package – plus a one-off £50-£60 connection charge.
Suffice to say, they’re not the cheapest of alternative networks, but then they’re also not making any use of government or gigabit voucher funding, and that tends to push up their costs (especially for rural and semi-rural builds that can be disproportionally expensive).
Simon Green said:
“Everything we’re doing in Farnborough is entirely self funded, there’s no Government funding as the area is not rural.
Our next target areas are the South West Basingstoke area around M3 J7, Studley near Birmingham, and Rothwell near Kettering.
We have a wireless network in Langley, backhauled with our own fibre to the nearby 6dg DC. They have to contact us to sign up for that though.
We’ve got our own fibre in a few business parks across Farnborough and Woking as well to provide business services – business parks are notoriously behind the curve for broadband.”
Speaking of expansion, 1310’s engineers have also recently visited the village of Studley in Warwickshire, which shows that they have ambitions that extend far beyond their existing network patch.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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what a silly name for ISP 😀
1310nm is one of the usable wavelengths in single mode fibre.
Great news, a shame about the pricing.
And yet again another provider is missing me out.
Toob are literally up & down the road (Frimley & Aldershot) offering 900mbps for £25.
I’m on VM and get 200/20mbs for £36
VM do 500/36mbs plus a landline for £45
why would anyone pay £46 for less?
I’d likely consider 100/100 mbs for £20
Sorry, but you’d ‘consider’ paying £20 a month for 100/100 full fibre broadband! Seriously? That is totally unrealistic, the could not afford to pay their staff minimum wage at those prices.
Considering I could get phone and 100/10 bb from vm for £27 or £33 including tv £20 seems fair.
That’s the magic of competition, they need to come in with attractive pricing else they won’t have any customers, I’m offering something rather than them getting nothing.
How many like me would consider slower downloads for faster uploads? It could be a niche that could be a good revenue stream.
For everyone else that looks only at the bigger number then purely on their prices alone there is no point going for them as far cheaper alternatives are here or coming especially toob with 900/900 for £25, just £5 more than I was considering & offering 9 times the bandwidth.
I’d suggest I do they had enough customers then £20 is realistic and enough to pay their staff more than minimum wage. At the moment they get £0 from me and won’t as there are more competitive & value for money alternatives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7UYHZkqbxc
And now just got an email from vm offering 1g/52mb for £62
1310 don’t really have a valid pricing model.
Signed up with 1310 in Rothwell, Kettering.
Price wise, they’re not too bad. £55 for 550/70. My brother is on VM,and he pays £47.50 for 100/20.
The speed that they have built the fibre around here has been amazing, and the engineers always friendly and have a good chat with you.
I think i’m going to be very glad that I have them as my ISP.