Grain to Start Expanding UK Full Fibre Broadband Network in Wigan
Carlisle-based broadband network and UK ISP Grain, which in July 2025 secured a £225m funding boost to continue their expansion (here), has revealed that they’ve now begun to expand their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines across the large Greater Manchester (England) town of Wigan; home to around 108,000 people.
The town is currently well covered by gigabit-capable broadband from both Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) and Openreach, alongside a few smaller FTTP/B builds from 4th Utility and Hyperoptic (those two are mostly focused on a few large residential buildings / MDUs). Back in December 2022 CityFibre also committed to build in Wigan (here), but it ended up being sacrificed when they scaled-back their commercial deployments.
As for Grain, the announcement doesn’t reveal anything much about their deployment plan for the town, although it’s worth noting that they have previously deployed across the Brogan Wilkins Park area – a development of new build homes. Recent data on local street works suggests their next expansion will, at least initially, be centred around the area of Park Road, Woodhouse Lane, and Gidlow Lane.
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The operator’s point-to-point fibre optic broadband network is currently home to over 43,000 customers and covers 270,000 UK premises (aiming to reach 600,000 in the future). We suspect the new areas of Wigan will start to go live for their first customers within the next 1-3 months (the official aim being “spring” 2026), as Grain are usually quite quick at putting new areas live.
Richard Cameron, Grain’s CEO, said:
“We’re excited to offer Wigan residents an internet service that can keep up with their digital lives.”
Customers can normally expect to pay from just £16.99 per month on an 18-month term for symmetric speeds of 150Mbps (including a router and free installation), which rises to £22.99 for their 1Gbps tier. But we understand that those in Wigan may be able to benefit from slightly lower “early-bird” prices, starting at £14.99 for 150Mbps etc.
Grain doesn’t state precisely how many premises in the town they expect to cover or when the roll-out will complete, although it is a location that should be big enough to sustain an additional altnet.
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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How about doing the work a few miles west, in Skelmersdale? Wigan is already served by multiple gigabit providers, whereas Skelmersdale has maybe a quarter of the town with FTTP capabilities. Get thousands of people signing up to the service if they installed it in Skelmersdale