Priston in North East Somerset to Get 100Mbps FTTP Broadband in April

North East Somerset (England) ISP TrueSpeed Communications (formerly Wansdyke Telecom) has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that their new symmetric 100Mbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network should be going live in the rural village of Priston during April 2016.

The roll-out, which is being fuelled by capacity from the new Hibernia Express network that recently connected North America to the UK (here), was first officially confirmed last October 2015 (here). But since then there have been no further updates, which left some to wonder whether anything was going to happen.

Happily TrueSpeed’s Director of Community Engagement, Kevin Rudman, told ISPreview.co.uk: “Our network deployment will be starting imminently, with customer connections expected to go live during April.” The village of Priston itself is home to around 230 people (80+ premises) and resides roughly 4 miles south west of Bath. We further understand that most of the local properties have already signed-up to take the service when it arrives.

Residents will thus soon be able to take home FTTP packages starting at 100Mbps (symmetrical) for £47.50 per month (strangely this is said to include a “phone line“) and a home based business product offering that runs at 150Mbps, although faster speeds are possible. However some of the details remain unclear, such as with regards to where the funding is all coming from.

On top of that some of TrueSpeed’s target coverage area can already access an upgraded broadband connection using BTOpenreach’s Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC VDSL2) network, although that doesn’t appear to bother them because the service struggles to deliver “superfast” (24Mbps+) speeds and apparently locals wanted something better.

Going forwards TrueSpeed has previously hinted that they could expand further into the Chew Valley area and possibly even reaching parts of rural Wiltshire.