ISP Lothian Broadband Celebrate 2000th Customer in Scotland

Internet provider Lothian Broadband, which is extending their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 70,000 premises across rural parts of East and Mid Lothian, has announced that they’ve exceeded 2,000 active customers for the first time across their fibre and fixed wireless networks in Scotland.

Until recently the ISP was predominantly still a Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) operator for remote homes within their region, but then they began to start building a new full fibre network to cater for the East Lothian village of Gifford (here). Since then they’ve secured a £20m boost from the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) and are now rolling out FTTP to the “fibre gap” of Scotland’s small towns and rural communities.

The operator has this week reached a new milestone of 2,000 customers, which comes after they completed the initial build of their new XGS-PON powered full fibre network across Longniddry, Pencaitland and Gifford.

Gavin Rodgers, Lothian Broadband Group CEO, said:

“Lothian Broadband Group is moving from strength to strength; reaching the milestone of 2,000 customers is an excellent illustration of this progress.

LBG’s record customer number can be attributed to meeting the needs for not only faster but also more reliable digital infrastructure within rural and semi-rural communities. More and more homes and businesses in towns and villages across Scotland are becoming aware of the value of ultrafast fibre broadband at a time when it is becoming more and more of a necessity for multiple users in a household or business to be able to have access to a quality internet connection concurrently.”

The announcement doesn’t tell us how many premises they’ve passed so far or what the customer split is between their wireless and FTTP networks, but it sounds like they’re going in the right direction. Customers on their fibre network typically pay from £29.99 for an unlimited 100Mbps (symmetric) service on a 12-month term, which rises to £59.99 for their top 900Mbps gigabit tier.