Voneus Aim Ultrafast Broadband for More of South West Wales
Rural focused UK ISP Voneus, which is supported by investment from Macquarie Capital, looks set to bring faster broadband speeds of between 50Mbps to 1000Mbps (gigabit) to more areas of South West Wales, seemingly including several communities across parts of Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion.
The provider, which currently holds a “near term” target to connect 100,000 rural UK homes to their new full fibre network (here) and has also acquired the companies behind several rival ISPs in Wales (e.g. Dyfed IT and IRG Computers), recently relocated to bigger premises in Carmarthen and has been steadily building up their team.
Voneus is currently already delivering network builds across parts of Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Powys, but over the next couple of weeks they’ll also be holding a series of events to discuss their future expansion in the communities of Crymych, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandysul and Whitland.
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Naomi Marshall, Head of Voneus’ Welsh Community Engagement Team, said (Swanseabaynews):
“With the pandemic moving basic services like doctor appointments and grocery shopping online, slow broadband speeds have become a huge issue for those living in areas of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire which have been left behind from high-speed broadband roll-outs.
These events are focused on giving local people a chance to meet us and learn all about what it is we do, as well as ask any questions they may have about bringing superfast and ultrafast broadband to their homes and businesses.
We are not looking to sign up people to plans or sell them anything, but rather we want to embed ourselves further within the region and showcase just what it is we do, and I encourage anyone who is curious about broadband to make their way down for an informal chat.
Our top priority is bringing about a better-connected tomorrow for hard-to-reach areas, and these talks are an important step in that process to let the community know we are committed to delivering this vital service to them.”
The big challenge for Voneus is that this part of Wales is also being targeted by full fibre deployments from rival operators, such as Ogi and Openreach. Interestingly, Crymych is separately due to be reached by Broadway Partners’s full fibre network (here), which makes it an interesting location to hold one of their events.
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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Good to hear they ate in my back yard, Llanelli area needs upgrading VM here currently.. FFTP would be preferable to me….
We aren’t going to see any large or impactful deployments from Voneus in South West Wales, they’ve had a tiny amount of funding and spent a lot of that on WISP acquisitions (with ~1000 customers each). £30m of commitment from Macquarie, understand they have cashflow issues.
On the other hand Ogi have £200m from Infracapital and are just focusing on FTTP without any WISP distractions.
Remember its the same people on the ground with Voneus; aka Dyfed and Resqnet, so don’t expect miracles or great communication.