WightFibre Begin Rollout of 1Gbps Home Broadband on Isle of Wight

The joint £35m project between cable ISP WightFibre and Infracapital, which aims to deploy a new Gigabit capable ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network to cover 53000 of the 61000 homes on the Isle of Wight (Hampshire, UK) by the end of 2022, has begun.

At present WightFibre already offers broadband download speeds of up to 152Mbps via their existing cable (DOCSIS) hybrid fibre coax network, although they’ve been conducting trials of a Gigabit (1000Mbps+) capable network using FTTH/P technology since 2016 (here) and at the end of 2017 the operator finally announced their Gigabit Island plans (here).

Last year’s announcement revealed that the operator intended to begin their rollout during mid-2018 and they would aim to reach “all the main towns and villages on the island” by early 2021.

Preliminary WightFibre Rollout Plan
Phase 1 – Cowes, Netport Upgrade 2018-19
Phase 2 – Ryde, Bambridge, Nettlestone 2019
Phase 3 – Sandown, Shanklin 2019-20
Phase 4 – Ventnor 2020
Phase 5 – West Wight [To Be Confirmed]

The main thrust of their deployment is still set to begin this summer, although today WightFibre has announced that the official roll-out phase will begin with a pilot deployment in Gurnard Pines, which will be followed by the Staplers area of Newport. All of this will involve the laying of fibre optic cable to around 400 homes during April and May 2018.

John Irvine, Wightfibre CEO, said:

“The WightFibre Gigabit Island project is a major undertaking which requires some very specialist knowledge – knowledge of the latest civil engineering cable laying technology and of current fibre-optic networking technologies – essential in order to truly future-proof our network. We have been really fortunate to find much of this knowledge and expertise right here on the island.”

The operator has also announced several new appointments to support their strategy (pictured above) including Island-born construction industry veteran Steve Cooper (Director to oversee the rollout) and he will be supported by David Winfield, who joins as the new Programme Director.

On top of that the operator has also appointed a new Operations Director in the shape of Simon Poole and a new Business Development Director called Richard Reis. Pretty much all of the appointments have a lot of experience in the telecoms and IT sectors.

The new network will certainly give Openreach’s (BT) fairly recent ‘up to’ 80Mbps FTTC (VDSL2) network on the island a run for its money, which was built with support from state aid (here). WightFibre has always held strong objections to this.

Finally, here’s a video of last year’s “Gigabit Island” announcement for anybody who may be interested.