Hyperoptic Deal Brings FTTP to 60,000 Social Homes in Leeds

UK ISP Hyperoptic, which specialises in building 1Gbps capable “full fibre” (FTTP/B) broadband networks to large buildings, has just awoken from a period of reorganisation to announce that “nearly” 60,000 social housing homes across Leeds will soon gain access to their service thanks to a new partnership with the city council.

The ISP predominantly tends to cater for large apartment (MDU) buildings and office blocks, which are quicker and cheaper to connect. But they also have a lot of competition in this space and Leeds is currently a very aggressive market for full fibre in general, with Openreach, Virgin Media and Cityfibre all building significant Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks.

In that sense Hyperoptic has scored a useful win with this latest council partnership. The press release doesn’t offer any details on their agreement, although we know that they usually cover a streamlined approach to wayleaves (legal land / property access agreements), which is very important for such operators as it can reduce their costs and admin (this in turn also makes deployment quicker).

As a result the provider will now be able to service the whole of Leeds Council’s housing portfolio thanks to the block agreement it has signed to expedite the rollout.

John McCabe, Hyperoptic’s National Head of Business Development, said:

“We recognised Leeds as a city in ‘need of speed’ back in 2015, when we announced we would be coming to the city. Since then we have connected hundreds of buildings and thousands of residents. We are thrilled that the council has recognised residents desire for superior connectivity – by signing this deal it enables us to deliver it faster –at no cost to the tax payer.”

Sadly Hyperoptic have been fairly quiet on new deployment announcements since last year’s acquisition by global investment firm KKR (here), but it looks like that is starting to change. Crucially today’s news mentions that they’re still “on track” to make their service available to 5 million UK properties by the end of 2024, but oddly there was no mention of their prior target for 2 million by the end of 2021.

Meanwhile they’re still reporting a current coverage level of over 400,000 premises passed (across 43 UK cities and towns in the UK – 50,000 of which are social housing properties) and it would be good to get a solid update on that figure. Nevertheless they remain one of the biggest full fibre providers in the United Kingdom, although if that 400K figure is correct then Cityfibre are close to overtaking them (both are still smaller than Openreach and Virgin Media).

As usual new customers can pick from either an unlimited broadband & phone bundle or a broadband-only (standalone) service on a 12 month minimum contract term. You can also get a “no contract” option (broadband-only), but this tends to cost a few pounds extra per month.

Prices currently start from £19.95 per month for a 50Mbps package and rise to £47 (discounted) for their top symmetric 1Gbps speed tier. Both currently attract a £29 one-off activation fee and you can add a phone (voice) service to that by paying an extra +£2 per month.