Hyperoptic – 1Gbps Broadband for Milton Keynes Social Housing

The Milton Keynes Council in Buckinghamshire has reached a new agreement with UK ISP Hyperoptic, which will see their 1000Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / B) broadband network being rolled out to cover 4,500 social housing properties in the town. The work is “due to start imminently.”

The announcement doesn’t contain much information about the agreement itself, although the provider has reached several similar deals with other local authorities in the past and these tend to reflect legal wayleave (access) agreements that come at no cost to the council. The ISP is already working with 50 councils across the UK and over 160,000 social housing properties now have access, or are imminently due to be connected.

Being Hyperoptic the focus here will be on the council’s large apartment buildings (Multi-Dwelling Units), with Ninth, Tenth and Silbury Boulevard scheduled to be the first buildings to go live.

David Walker, Head of Property at Hyperoptic, said:

“It’s incredibly positive that the public sector is taking such a proactive role in fulfilling the vision of a full fibre UK and bridging the digital divide. The issues that typically compound digital exclusion are the provision and quality of broadband services. Having access to a connection over full fibre approach gives social housing residents the best Internet experience they could possibly have so that they can take advantage of everything that the Internet has to offer. This, in turn, addresses the digital divide dilemma as well as feeds into the desirable social mobility paradigm.”

Nigel Long, Cabinet Member for Housing and Regeneration, said:

“This new partnership will open doors for our residents to thrive. It will improve access to training and give people the means to apply for jobs and so much more. I’d like to thank council colleagues and partners for their work in delivering this.”

All of this should help to support Hyperoptic’s target to cover 2 million UK homes by the end of 2021 and they have an ambition for 5 million by 2024, although the latter will require more investment and there seems to be a lot of related activity occurring behind the scenes (here). Sadly we haven’t had an update on their rollout progress since last year and so it’s difficult to know how far they’ve gone beyond 500,000 premises (completed).

At the same time it’s worth noting that they’ve got some local competition from Openreach’s FTTP and G.fast network, as well as Cityfibre’s major deployment of Gigafast full fibre technology across the whole town with Vodafone. Customers on Hyperoptic’s network can expect to pay from £20 per month for a 50Mbps service and up to £45 for 900Mbps+.