ISP County Broadband Begin Full Fibre Rollout in Rural Essex UK

Some 60 homes in the rural Essex village of Cornish Hall End near Braintree will become the first to benefit from the start of County Broadband‘s roll-out of a new rural Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which is being supported by an investment of £46m from Aviva Investors.

At present locals are only able to receive a broadband speed of around 1-2Mbps, which comes via copper lines and ADSL2+ technology over Openreach’s (BT) ageing infrastructure. One of the related cabinets has been upgraded to support Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) services but for most properties the lines are simply too long in order for that to work.

By comparison the “full fibre” service being deployed by CB should be able to deliver Gigabit class performance. Prices start at £39.99 inc. VAT per month for an unlimited symmetrical 30Mbps package on a 24 month contract term and rise to £74.99 for the top 1000Mbps tier.

County Broadband’s demand-led ultrafast broadband network will also be rolling out to other rural communities in East Anglia (i.e. they seek interest from 30% of local premises before work can begin). The next on their list will be Cold Norton on the Dengie Peninsula in May 2019, with additional villages including Foxearth, Pentlow, Gestingthorpe, Bulmer, Stambourne, Wickham St Paul and Pebmarsh set to follow.

Meanwhile the new service in Cornish Hall End will be fully operational by the beginning of May 2019.

Lloyd Felton, CEO of County Broadband, said:

“This is an exciting day for Essex and we’re delighted to soon be welcoming Cornish Hall End as the first rural community in the county to join our new full fibre network, significantly changing the way residents and business owners live, work and play.

Our FTTP infrastructure will propel forgotten villages across East Anglia into the 21st Century and beyond, whilst delivering significant investment in their long-term prosperity. It will also ensure they are fit for the future when every community will need ultrafast speeds to keep up with increasing digital demands.”

Councillor Peter Schwier, Braintree District Council, said:

“I am delighted that County Broadband is rolling out full fibre broadband to the vitally important rural areas of Braintree District.

This new network is an ambitious schedule to full fibre-enable rural properties, dramatically improving speed, bandwidth and quality. It is not only needed today but future-proofs our rural communities and businesses and will enable everyone to enjoy the choice and benefits of unlimited, ultrafast broadband.”

Admittedly this isn’t strictly speaking the start of their FTTP roll-out, since back in 2017 they also built a trial network to cater for 50 homes in the village of Broughton (here). The ISP currently has 3,000 customers on their wider network, although most of those hail from their more established Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) infrastructure in other parts of Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (England).

The future goal of their new fibre network is to cover 30,000 premises in poorly served areas across the East of England region.