Fibrus Names Next N.Ireland FTTP Broadband Rollout Areas

Belfast-based UK ISP Fibrus, which last year started the £85m+ roll-out of a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network in Northern Ireland (here) and has also been linked to Project Stratum (here), has today unveiled the next batch of areas in County Down to benefit from their infrastructure.

At present an impressive 31% of premises in Northern Ireland (Ofcom’s September 2019 data) can already access a “full fibre” network, which has risen sharply since 16% in January 2019 (here) but most of that is as a result of private investment from Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media. Otherwise the region has tended to lack much choice in terms of alternative FTTP ISPs, until now.

Fibrus hopes to change that and as such they recently began their first pilot deployment in Dundrum. Today the ISP has confirmed that several more locations in County Down will be joining their first during H1 2020, including Castlewellan, Newcastle (not to be confused with the big city in England) and Ballynahinch.

Assuming all goes to plan then the provider should have built their coverage out to around 15,000 premises by mid-2020. Eventually they also intend to offer wholesale access to this network, albeit while continuing to run their own retail division.

Dominic Kearns, Fibrus CEO, said:

“This is a big year for Fibrus as we begin a major investment programme in full fibre infrastructure in Northern Ireland. Our challenge is to build a scalable organisation that will assist delivering the next generation of digital infrastructure that will future proof communities for years to come.

Fibrus is about creating an opportunity for the industry’s best talent to address the biggest opportunity in telecoms for decades and I think today’s announcement proves that we are well on our way.

We have just commenced our build activity for the year and are on course to deliver 15,000 homes in the first half of this year. As the organisation matures and we bring in more people we hope to keep improving on our homes delivered year on year to assist the Government with its targets for 2025.”

Prices start from £39 per month (currently discounted to £19.50) for an unlimited 100Mbps package with a router and free installation (it’s only free with a gigabit voucher), which rises to £75 per month (discounted to £50) for their top 1000Mbps tier. All of these are on 24 month contract terms.

Since the last update Fibrus has also made the following additions to their senior management team.

• David Armstrong joins as Sales and Marketing Director

• Thomas Grant as Chief Technology Officer

• Jenny Nuttall as Chief Finance Officer

• Conor Harrison was recently appointed as Chief Operating Officer.