New UK ISP Box Broadband has confirmed that the large rural village of Cranleigh in Surrey will be the next one to be reached by their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which has already started connecting homes and businesses in nearby Ewhurst, Walliswood and Ellen’s Green.
At a population of about 11,000 Cranleigh, which sits around 8 miles (13km) south east of Guildford, is many times larger than Box’s previous deployments (it’s one of the largest villages in the country) and will represent a significant challenge. On top of that it’s already quite well covered by Openreach’s significantly slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) services.
Box is a demand-led provider like Gigaclear and as such they’ve already started drumming up interest from the local community (the above picture is from last weekend’s Cranleigh Carnival), which will help them to determine their initial deployment plan for the village. Apparently they’re aiming to connect new customers in the “coming weeks.”
Box Broadband Progress Update
We are making great progress on our deployment for the Cranleigh areas as well as expanding our current network in Ewhurst, Walliswood and Ellens Green towards Cox Green areas as well. Construction is moving at a fast pace now and we will soon be able to connect many new customers in Cranleigh in the coming weeks.
This year, we have also launched our brand new VoIP telephone service to complement our hyper-fast broadband. For a fixed price with no line rental, our telephone service includes standard anytime UK landline and mobile calls, and offers many convenient features such as mobile calling, voicemail transcription and email to fax reception as well as business-grade IVR menus for our business customers as well.
Customers of the new symmetric speed service can expect unlimited usage, an 18 month minimum contract term, included wireless router and installation costs start from around £149.99. Packages cost from £29.95 inc. VAT per month for a 50Mbps plan and go up to £59.95 for a 1Gbps connection.
The ISP has previously indicated that they want to cater for larger Multi-Dwelling Units (apartment blocks) and could make their network open access to other ISPs. On top of that they have an aim to cover more than 100,000 homes within the next 4 years (by 2023).
The provider may also make some strategic use of Openreach’s Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product (i.e. using existing cable ducts to run fibre), at least in areas where doing so makes sense.
UPDATE 2nd July 2019
Correction to the above. Box says they plan to cover 100,000 premises not 10,000.
Village 11k really? I thought the official definition of town was below that.
The definition system for villages, towns and cities in this country is sometimes a bit more complicated than population size. For example, Lancing in West Sussex with a population of around 19K might be described as a town, but it has not formally taken on this status and, with three tiers of local government, it has a parish council rather than a town council.
My local town was 4,500 when I first moved (though its now more than double that) But then it was a market town which probably explains that (The trad/older definition of town).
Box Broadband also started work in Chiddingfold, Surrey last week.
They appear to be making good progress, it is nice to see a network construction that is well run and not total chaos.
I understand they intend to cover all the village, then move into other areas in Surrey.
Many thanks Donald for mentioning this and your kind words , we are working very hard to bring our ultra high speed internet to a number of villages as we progress with our build out ,
[EDIT: Changed Donna to Donald]
Hi. They started well but I haven’t seen them for a few weeks now. Has anyone heard if they are returning soon?
Unfortunately I signed up with Now Broadband recently but I’ll be very interested in switching to Box Broadband when my contract period comes to an end.