New UK Alternative Network ISP DIGI Preps 10Gbps Broadband for £25 UPDATE
A couple of months ago we reported that Romanian telecoms company DIGI Communications had entered the UK market by acquiring 51% of the share capital of alternative network provider WhyFibre via subsidiary Fiber One Limited (here). The provider has since launched a retail ISP called DIGI and promises speeds of 10Gbps for just £25. But the rollout plan remains unclear.
Regular readers will know that WhyFibre has been around and building a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in England for several years (here and here). But the operator’s website remains somewhat of a holding page and, until now, no retail ISP has ever emerged to offer services over their network. The company’s most recent micro accounts also suggested only limited activity (here).
However, back in 2025 some of ISPreview’s readers noticed that a business called Fiber One (American spelling) had been spotted building a new FTTP network in the Hertfordshire (England) town of Letchworth, which when challenged said they were working on behalf of WhyFibre. The contractor appeared to be laying fresh fibre via Openreach’s existing cable ducts (PIA).
Advertisement
Similar activity was later spotted in locations such Luton, St Albans, Dacorum, Stevenage, Watford, Waltham Cross and Welwyn Hatfield, among other places – a fair bit of which includes overbuild with other gigabit-capable broadband networks, like CityFibre.
According to recent data from Point Topic’s roadworks database (here), Whyfibre Limited as a street-works promoter has now been spotted working across 2,274 postcodes (over 53,000 premises) since October 2024, with around 10,000 permit events filed to date.
Despite all this activity, the operator’s network and retail plans have remained shrouded in mystery. But that recently started to change after a new retail ISP called DIGI surfaced in the UK, associated to the same group of companies, alongside a claim that its services were “now available in the UK!“. More recently one of ISPreview’s readers (jpm) spotted that they’d finally put some prices on their website.
DIGI’s Broadband Packages
Fiber 1Gbps – £15 / month
Fiber 2.5 Gbps – £20 / month
Fiber 10 Gbps – £25 / month
However, leaving aside the mistaken use of “Fiber” instead of “Fibre” on their package names, the website doesn’t currently include much detail what other features their packages might include (e.g. install costs, bundled router, symmetric/asymmetric speeds, IPv6 support, CGNAT, post-contract prices?). In addition, we’ve yet to find any postcodes within DIGI’s supposed patch of network coverage that will actually return a positive result when run through their availability checker.
Advertisement
The fact that they are now showing prices does at least suggest that an official launch may be imminent and those are certainly some incredibly aggressive price points (possibly reflective of a loss leading strategy to take customers away from rivals as quickly as possible). Overall, this is a bold but high-risk strategy to be adopting in the current market. Much will also depend on their ability to sustain a decent level of support, as well as service quality, alongside such pricing.
ISPreview has attempted to contact DIGI in the hope of receiving a useful update and will report back if one surfaces.
UPDATE 6:41am
After more checking we did find some postcodes around Stevenage that returned a positive result via DIGI’s checker (e.g. SG2 9XS). The order system also confirms that the provider’s speeds are symmetric.
Advertisement
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.
Rural Broadband ISP Airband Appoint Paula Strickland as CFO »
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Be great if they hit YF and CF areas – in repsonse they would have to lower their prices which would apply nationwide?
They are building over both CF and YF. CF won’t change their pricing nationwide as they’re wholesale not retail, YF won’t change their pricing nationwide as it’d be insane to for the sake of matching a massively loss-leading competitor covering a tiny sliver of their footprint.
YF don’t have to charge the same price nationwide, neither does any other ISP or network operator besides Openreach.
Before they release their product they should probably think about making it compliant with UK regulations. Either way those prices aren’t remotely sustainable. They’re wanting to charge less for gigabit at retail from home to the Internet than CityFibre charge wholesale to get from home to the fibre exchange.
At £15 a month even if they haven’t borrowed anything, have no salaries to pay, don’t pay for PIA, electricity, bandwidth, colocation, etc, and they match the very best for efficiency of build they’re still looking at 3 years to pay back the build and install costs if they get 100% take up.
Their European websites offer pricing in the same ballpark as the UK one and they seem to be reasonably well established.
They do use other wholesalers where their own network isn’t available but at prices much closer to the uk normal range.
They also seem to use CGNat unless you pay an extra euro per month to get a dynamic IP. Static IP doesn’t seem to be available. Doesn’t necessarily mean they will do that here I suppose.
That said, I don’t see how a profit can be made here at those prices either.
If thy keep their promise of these speeds, reliability, good cs and no price increase in contract..
Seems a bit dodgy advertising 10 GBit/s when they have to show 50% of customers can get that speed at peak times – pretty much impossible on XGS-PON. I suspect these are placeholder products and pricing!
Given how they’re still using the word “Fiber”, rather than “Fibre” (correct British spelling), then I tend to assume they probably haven’t put enough effort in yet to adopt the ASA’s advertising rules either.
Impossible to achieve on XGSPON even if you were the only customer on the PON.
Yes, I think it depends on local regulations. They offer 10Gbps without qualification in some countries and with qualification in others.
Incidentally, 10Gbps for 15 Euro per month on the Portuguese site with WiFi 7 router on a 3 month contract. Blimey.
At £25 I suspect they’ll have a few customers who don’t realise that 10G over WiFI to their 5 year old laptop or iPhone isn’t going work. At a more premium price point it’s likely folk will do more checks before ordering
Saying that, that means the amount of customers hammering the 10G will perhaps be lower
Well I managed to place an order… let’s see what happens. I am in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.
Nice, do you have an install date?
For comparison, CityFibre seem have a two month lead time in St Albans, Herts. (unless you’re ordering through Sky).
What postcodes worked for you?
I am being installed tomorrow. Post code SG2 8BJ
You’re doing well. I’ve just checked ten of the 53 address points at that postcode and my luck must be out as not a single one showed an offer of service
My install has been completed and now working. I had a few issues (which was to be expected as I was only the 4th install). The engineers were working hard to make sure everything was installed correctly.
Just to update with a few details that are not on the website:
-Uses CGNAT
-IPV6 is enabled
-I have gone for 10GB speed (I know I will never need it :D)
-Supplied router is a AX7501-B0 which the fibre plugs directly into so no ONT.
Congrats! 4th install is cool.
Were there any installation/setup charges?
Could you please share the ASN they are using (https://bgp.tools/)?
What IPv6 prefix size have they given you (hopefully /56)?
Were the engineers from Fiber One (or DIGI, WhyFibre, other)?
There were no installation charges for the install and will just cost £25 per month on a 30 day contract.
Each device in the network is provided with a public routable IPV6 address which are dynamic.
Example address is 2a03:9c20:4000:12:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx/64 (removed the last bits in the address)
ASN: AS41852
The engineers were all from Digi (based in Luton). They were very good and worked with me to resolve any issues.
Thanks for the info!
Any chance you can run a traceroute, as I’m curious what path their packets are taking (just remove your own home network and broadband IP address from it).
This is the trace to google:
traceroute to google.co.uk (142.250.129.94), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 x.x.x.x (x.x.x.x) 3.924 ms 3.425 ms 3.945 ms
2 x.x.x.x (x.x.x.x) 4.007 ms 5.098 ms 4.013 ms
3 10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1) 3.982 ms 5.521 ms 5.672 ms
4 10.221.112.52 (10.221.112.52) 5.897 ms 6.439 ms 7.051 ms
5 10.221.100.108 (10.221.100.108) 6.835 ms 25.281 ms
10.221.100.154 (10.221.100.154) 23.989 ms
6 86.127.48.117 (86.127.48.117) 6.372 ms 8.123 ms 7.442 ms
7 * * *
8 108.170.234.230 (108.170.234.230) 9.939 ms
142.251.54.30 (142.251.54.30) 8.660 ms
192.178.46.84 (192.178.46.84) 73.157 ms
9 209.85.250.242 (209.85.250.242) 9.044 ms
192.178.252.204 (192.178.252.204) 8.942 ms
209.85.243.22 (209.85.243.22) 9.186 ms
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
I have spoke with some of my excolleagues in Bucharest and asked them to post a deployement map on the website, it should make it easier to see where they are. As for CG-NAT, call the call center and ask them to provide a static IP. They will oblige. I’m not aware of how many classes of IP’s they have allocated for UK, but I can ask.
DIGI already became a big if not dominant in some areas player in Belgium and Spain. They definitely have money.
It does scream a little bit of an impulsive move without due diligence. Sustainability Is going to be a challenge for them in this very competitive market.
Last year Digi had a huge rollout here in Gran Canaria and I moved to them from Movistar more than having my monthly cost.
I pay €8,84 pm for 500Mb (symmetric) fibre to the premises.
DIGI also offer unlimited data/calling mobile plans for €8pm for one line, €6 per line for 2 lines or €5 per line for 3 lines using Movistar.
Solid connection with only one outage in last year when most of Spanish providers were affected.
I’m in Portugal I similarly pay €5 per month for unlimited calls text and data, the 5G speeds are excellent, they seem a good company.
Guys, obviously you have never heard of Digi. They are Romania’s biggest ISP and when they say they deliver 10gbps, they do. One thing people don’t know is Digi bought years ago main transport lines around Europe, backbones, they can easily sustain 10gbps end-client speeds, symmetrical. Digi has been around the market since 2000, if I remember correctly; also they offer PPoE credentials, so you can easily use your own router if you want; Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, are connected via high speed transport backbones, which interlinks with Romania’s Digi Xchange; Digi uses a combination of CG-NAT with dinamically allocated IP’s. This informations I have since I was working years ago when Spain and Italy networks where developed (former NOC engineer here). Wording isn’t the problem here; you might believe is not sustainable to keep the prices low; well, let me ask you something else ? How on Earth they survived for 26 years, they became the biggest ISP in Eastern Europe and expanded in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Hungary ? They don’t care if they invest alot, because trust me, they have money, all they care is getting the clients. And they will. Vodafone has been knocked out in relatively every market in Eastern Europe, telecom didn’t surived too long, and orange is trying to keep up the pace with Digi. Will they succeed ? Yes, they have done it before. Many times over. And they will keep the prices as low as possible. This year in Portugal, they knocked over Vodafone as the countries main ISP and they are still gaining speed. It was just a matter of time in entering the market in UK. And as for inside, because I still have ears in Bucharest: low unlimited mobile plans, with at least 80 digital HD channels, incoming as well somewhere towards the end of 2026, beggining 2027
What PON technology are they using? If XGS-PON (as most commonly used by altnets) then they cannot advertise 10 GBit/s. If it’s a higher speed PON 25 or 50 then it’s probably fine but at these price points doesn’t seem too likely!
FTTH XGS-PON 50 and for core transport NG-PON2; they are not altnet, they are a standalone ISP; you make a mistake by judging the prices; that’s the policy in Digi: divide and conquer; I no longer work for them but the policy stays the same: low prices, best quality possible. And yes, they are using traffic shapping, some of the ports will be closed by default and will have to make a request in NOC to open them; we had monitoring on traffic to detects botnets, crawlers, automatic scanning, port scanning, you name it, we had it. No, we didn’t looked at what people where browsing or torrenting, or whatever. We where interested only in malicious traffic. Coming back to prices: I don’t remember last time they upped the prices, that’s how rarely it is happening. And what is more important: if you cancel the contract, they will not charge you for the remaining time, they do straight up rolling contracts. The latest report I could find which paints a picture on ISP’s in Romania is here: (sorry, didn’t found a more recent one, the charts are from 2024) https://www.ookla.com/research/reports/romania-speedtest-connectivity-report-h12024
Found a report from Nperf from 2025 here: https://media.nperf.com/files/publications/RO/RO-Barometer-fixe-connections-nPerf-2025_7857.pdf
Digi is first with the lowest latency. Not aware how tests where performed tho.
They are an altnet it just means any fibre infrastructure challenger to incumbent monopolist Openreach. Not sure if “XGS-PON 50” is a thing but if it is 50 Gbit/s shared bandwidth to the home then fair play to them! We’ll have to see how it goes. I looked up their financials and they seem quite profitable. I can see they will be quite disruptive if they can sustain this pricing and roll out widely. Although the other countries they are in do have much lower costs than the UK.
That was one of the last projects I was involved, XGS-PON 50 (noted here 50 gbps) before I left. Exactly what I said, keeping the low prices makes them money, so they afford to invest. I have never been in touch with whoever is making up the financial plans, but whoever they are, it works. As another Digi normal user now, I have and use in UK Digi Mobile unlimited plan, the cost per month for 2 numbers, one given to my wife, with Romanian numbers, is around £4/month. That includes unlimited roaming, unlimited international minutes and national minutes. So, not only fixed internet is cheap, same goes for mobile. But guess this is a discussion for another topic somewhere else.
“FTTH XGS-PON 50” << Doubtful, they might have been testing it but they are not providing it commercially. Their CPE even in Romania is all XGSPON and below, not 50GPON. No-one has a purely 50GPON network anywhere in the world, it would cost too much.
"for core transport NG-PON2" << Doubtful, NG-PON2 is 10 Gbit/s per wavelength, is expensive and isn't a core transport technology. Hardly anyone uses it in access networks and in the core they'd use regular duplex/twin fibre technology as it's far cheaper, far higher capacity and has far more range.
"And yes, they are using traffic shapping" << Not in the UK they aren't, else they are going to have to be open about exactly what they're doing. They can't call it unlimited if they shape.
‘They are Romania’s biggest ISP and when they say they deliver 10gbps, they do. One thing people don’t know is Digi bought years ago main transport lines around Europe, backbones, they can easily sustain 10gbps end-client speeds, symmetrical.’
This isn’t accurate. I’m sure their core can easiy handle those speeds however customers connect via GPON/XGSPON so maximum speed a little over 8 Gbit/s. Prices are very impressive regardless but they aren’t selling 10 Gbit/s. Their networks are a mix of GPON and XGSPON, they use combo cards elsewhere, with lower tier customers on GPON to save on costs.
Be interesting to see how they do in the UK. We are not in the same situation as their other countries.
john_r how is Openreach a monopolist when they compete with VMO2 and 100+ altnets?
You can doubt how much you want, I worked there, most likely you didn’t. While I could easily prove what I say, this would involve disclosing personal data which I am not willing to do.
Even their Romanian website sells 10G so don’t understand why you try to argue.
https://prnt.sc/JsUJyzyFWwAG
I never said they would traffic shape in UK, I said that’s what we used to do for all Romanian traffic, Spanish and Italian traffic. BY the time the Belgium network deployed I have already left.
Quote: ‘They are Romania’s biggest ISP and when they say they deliver 10gbps, they do. One thing people don’t know is Digi bought years ago main transport lines around Europe, backbones, they can easily sustain 10gbps end-client speeds, symmetrical.’
Don’t try to argue, one thing I can point out: you haven’t lived in Romania, you definetly haven’t worked in NOC with su, and definetly are still used with old technology, like copper cable.
And will point out a couple of things: We deployed first time FTTH technology back in 2006, where is UK now ? Oh wait. You just started. Wonder why. But I know my guys, and cannot wait for them to prove you wrong. And yes, you can shape and have unlimited at the same time. How on earth you would handle congestion my friend ? Please, if you haven’t worked in a NOC before, keep your thoughts for yourself. All the best.
So I have just signed up @ LU55GJ for £15 pm for 1Gbps on a rolling 30 day contract! This includes a WiFi 6 router which is to be returned within 15 days of ending service.
There will be an additional installation cost which I will be notified of.
Currently in contract with Aquiss till November but will have both connections till then.
Update…. they connected 2 days after sign up.
I signed up while abroad and still not home. Partner is happy with installation. Son took a speedtest on his iPhone 885/513
Exactly what I said, one of the exit points is through Bucharest, which means your traffic is routed through Bucharest using one of the backbones. I have highlighted the exit IP in Bucharest, that’s the main NOC. Well, one of the IP’s anyway.
1 x.x.x.x (x.x.x.x) 3.924 ms 3.425 ms 3.945 ms
2 x.x.x.x (x.x.x.x) 4.007 ms 5.098 ms 4.013 ms
3 10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1) 3.982 ms 5.521 ms 5.672 ms
4 10.221.112.52 (10.221.112.52) 5.897 ms 6.439 ms 7.051 ms
5 10.221.100.108 (10.221.100.108) 6.835 ms 25.281 ms
10.221.100.154 (10.221.100.154) 23.989 ms
6 86.127.48.117 (86.127.48.117) 6.372 ms 8.123 ms 7.442 ms <——— Exit point Bucharest, main NOC
7 * * *
8 108.170.234.230 (108.170.234.230) 9.939 ms
142.251.54.30 (142.251.54.30) 8.660 ms
192.178.46.84 (192.178.46.84) 73.157 ms
9 209.85.250.242 (209.85.250.242) 9.044 ms
192.178.252.204 (192.178.252.204) 8.942 ms
209.85.243.22 (209.85.243.22) 9.186 ms
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *