Swish Fibre Reveals Next 22 UK Towns for 10Gbps Broadband
New ISP Swish Fibre, which last year began work to extend their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 250,000 premises across the Home Counties (i.e. just outside London), has today unveiled a full list of 33 poorly served towns (22 new additions) where their service is due to be rolled out next.
Just to recap. Swish Fibre was acquired by Fern Trading (they also own Jurassic Fibre in the South West of England) at the end of 2019, which formed part of a “long-term funding deal” that they said would enable them to unlock £250m of investment (here). At around the same time the provider began building their new “full fibre” network in parts of Buckinghamshire (here).
The initial 11 locations announced at the end of last year reflected roughly 50,000 premises and the first customers are due to go live on that network in Marlow from July 2020, which will soon be followed by Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield. Surveying and planning is complete for these towns and work is already underway in Gerrards Cross, with Beaconsfield due to start in Autumn 2020.
As things stand, Swish Fibre will be active in at least 10 of the towns in its roadmap by June 2021. On top of that they’ve today expanded their roll-out list to total 33 locations (mostly towns) across the Home Counties of England, which once completed should achieve their initial target of 250,000 premises.
Swish’s 33 Rollout Locations
First 11 Locations (December 2019)
Marlow (live soon)
Gerrards Cross (live soon)
Beaconsfield (live soon)
Flackwell Heath
Wooburn Green and Bourne End
Hazlemere
Great Missenden
Thame
Chinnor
Princes Risborough
HaddenhamNext 22 Locations (June 2020)
Alton
Ascot
Banbury
Bagshot
Bordon
Buckingham
Corsham
Cranleigh
Crawley Down
Crowborough
East Grinstead
Farnham
Godalming
Haywards Heath
Heathfield
Liphook
Lindford
Marlborough
Penn
Sevenoaks
Southwater
Uckfield
As previously indicated, the ISP is primarily aiming to tackle “underserved towns and villages where broadband availability is poor and there is strong demand for ultrafast broadband services.” Admittedly some of the aforementioned locations already have some degree of full fibre coverage (e.g. Gigaclear in Sevenoaks and Virgin Media in East Grinstead), which could make for an interesting clash of commercial rivals.
According to Swish the new towns “have been carefully selected as commercially viable, following an extensive evaluation process undertaken by Swish Fibre and independent analysts.”
Brice Yharrassarry, CEO of Swish Fibre, said:
“We’re thrilled to announce our wider rollout plans today, which brings the first phase of fullfibre rollout up to a quarter of a million properties covered in the Home Counties. Construction works on the ground are progressing extremely well and the early signs of interest within Marlow has exceeded our expectations. We’re excited to have started civils work in Gerrards Cross and are on track to be active in at least ten towns by June 2021.”
The accelerated construction work has apparently not come at the expense of any lag-time in engaging with the local community in Marlow. Adapting quickly to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Swish Fibre team have already engaged with hundreds of Marlow residents via regular video call sessions and Q&As, as well as one-to-one customer engagement by telephone and email.
Despite being one of the youngest provider’s in this market, Swish is already making better progress than some of their more established peers in the alternative network space. Obviously it doesn’t hurt when you’re backed by plenty of funding and have a senior management team with lots of previous experience via the likes of Gigaclear, RM, BT, SSE (Enterprise Telecoms) and UK Power Networks.
We look forward to seeing their progress over the next few years and it’s also refreshing to see another ISP that is clear about their future roll-out plans.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Marlborough, Wiltshire?
Only Marlborough I know of.
Corsham is in Wiltshire as well…. wouldn’t say no to 10 Gbps in Chippenham just down the road…
Yes and Corsham in Wiltshire, Wonder what backhaul they are using as these towns are quite disparate. Would they use OR / BT’s network?
Can’t see getting to Marlborough being cheap or quick process, whatever way they take it, that could turn out to be an expensive run of cable.
TOM, Michelle Donelan MP for Chippenham Constituency,has been going all out for full fibre for Corsham,BOA,Melksham,Chippenham & surrounding area.
Thanks Optical
I had seen this already, however information around her campaign is quite vague. She mentions about her plan to have the Chippenham Constituency covered in the next 5 years when this simply falls in line with the Governments plans to roll out FTTP within 5 years.
Virgin are currently laying cable as we speak in Chippenham so will keep an eye on this to see if it pushes to my end of town.
I bet someone at Openreach has added these to their hit list now 😀
Overbuild em all. Thats the motto right?
Wouldn’t be surprised.
We are having problems with Openreach in Flintshire. N.Wales. Just intrigued by your comment as there have been suggestions here that Openreach have jumped in on another companies contract
Some are already on the OR list (January 2020) so it shows that Swish are confident that they can establish a competitive presence by being very selective in both OR and Virgin areas. Although it is not clear what parts of town/estates are proposed.
If you actually look at the date of releases you will see that they are the ones over building OR network……………….why let reality get in the way of a good old lie.
Seems odd that the first set of locations are all the areas surrounding, but not actually including, High Wycombe. The town is a lot more difficult, but doesn’t come without the benefits of a much larger customer base.
I suspect this is more to do with going for the affluent areas where people are more likely to pay for the additional speed.
Would it not be better to upgrade first in areas that have little to no service instead of places that are already able to use broadband adequately! We are 5 miles outside of a main town in a rural area & can only get 1-5 mb speed depending on luck!! Especially as there is non existent mobile signal so wi-fi is essential…
Better for you and me Yes, not better for the Business or investors sadly.
You need public investment to support those, where as this is a commercial deployment so they can only go where it makes real economic sense to do so.
Hi. What about small places like the one I live where internet is sometimes as slow as 36mbs with super fast fiber and mobile phones don’t work properly with 4g. Huntingdonshire/ Cambridgeshire. We pay loads for a bad service.
36mbs isnt slow
I’m in one of those towns, any idea on the cost for the service? Can’t see it on their website.
My guess is we’ll get some final details on that next month when the service actually goes live.
Unlikely to be anywhere near full coverage in these locations.
Prices as always will be based on what the market will stand at the time of completion. Jurassic offer from SmartHome 50/10 £35 to SmartHome 1000/200 for £100 but do have adoption offers. Whether Swish take a similar approach is not clear.
Certainly they will have a window before any FTTP competition from others arrives.
OR have probably already determined the rollout locations, timescales and are following a largely contiguous approach.
Clear to see where all the countries money is being spent
Don’t think the taxpayer is funding this stuff.
All these alt nets and non in West Lothian Scotland
What about rural towns and villages where OR is the only provider using 1970’s copper or even worse aluminium cables?
Happen to be in one of those villages,a few months ago I had 4 or 5 line faults in the space of roughly six week on the same short section of cable,not sure if it’s copper or aluminum,we have both,it’s been 8 years of problems,& OR point blank refuse to sort the problem properly,or get rid of about 200mtrs of cables which double back & prevents me from getting GFast.
Are they just doing PIA or are they having to dig up roads to install their own fibre network?
If PIA then Openreach will end up offering 1Gbps FTTH in the same coverage areas… But Swish say they can do 10Gbps… which would need PtP fibre or they are just not capping the speed on XGPON and splitting this between 32~64 people.
> If PIA then Openreach will end up offering 1Gbps FTTH in the same coverage areas
PIA just means using Openreach’s poles and/or ducts. There are lots of places in the country which these exist, but there’s no Openreach FTTP (yet).
> 10Gbps… which would need PtP fibre
Not necessarily. 10Gbps peak on a shared 10Gbps PON isn’t really a problem for domestic users. Most homes would struggle to pull 1Gbps even running a speedtest. Or they could use different lambdas.
I would agree with NE555 that 10G domestic PON is not such a problem with the PON’s that are now on the open market.
Although it may be PtP – there was an interesting thread in which Wights Fibre’s (?)CEO said it was only about 5% more to do PtP than PON.
Does anyone know for sure if this is PON or PtP?
Job advert infers PON and remote cabinet based OLTs.
How much is that cost I wonder for a 10G PON line, the company I work for here in HK prices it at £288 per month with a one off installation cost of around £5000
Are you talking about Netvigator?
Typical ,everything down the south of the country, nothing exists north of Watford, bloody typical we will be a lasts thought.
It’s Grim Up North.
So CityFibre digging in Derby, Leicester, Doncaster, Batley, Huddersfield, Halifax, Bolton; Nynet in Filey; KCom in Hull, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire; Hyperoptic in Leeds are all in the south? I’d better hand back my Geography O-Level!
A bit of knowledge or research before publishing Hyperbole is always a good look…..
What a pile of shit. London again. Everything for London. Are these stupid companies even aware that there’s life outside of that disgusting overpopulated dog hole?
Most of these places are in Sussex, Surrey, Kent or Hampshire.
Why let reality get in the way of a good old moan.
Oh please! Surely you must realise by now the UK economy is LONDONCENTRIC, then the Shires, then the rest of the country. There is the occasional appeasement of projects for the North, ie Manchester. There are other places in the UK…. I think? At least we are all not using dial up….so that’s some progress.
I live in East Grinstead and have nothing to do with London. Yet here I am on a flaky FTTC line which varies between 20-30 down and 5 up in my home on a 1970s built estate. I’ve had 5 callouts for DLM issues due to a crappy intermediate cab and line length.
Still, I count myself lucky. Houses in the next road are on half those speeds.
Anyway, as an IT professional working at home this is the best I can get – far from ideal. At least until VM & OR get around to digging up my road twice. Maybe even 3 times if Swish arrive.
Mind if I’m allowed FTTP, now?
5G – best solution.
Lots of market towns and conservation areas in that list.
Good luck with your ROI Swish.
Why oh why is this new super fast fibre optic technology being given to the middle class households and not the working class people in Bucks. Also the richest households in ENGLAND are being given this product, ie, Beaconsfield, Gerrads Cross, and Marlow,. Don’t the working classes count for anything these days.
Really? Are you that thick?
Everybody needs good Internet. Especially those that run business from home or work in high paid management jobs.
This is a commercial rollout. The investors want to make a return. That means passing as many homes as can afford your service as possible per £ spent. Their modelling must show that there’s more money to be had overbuilding in wealthy areas than going it alone in less wealthy ones.
@125us Overbuilding what exactly?
Mark – If you aren’t going to contribute with anything sensible then why bother? FTTP is being deployed all over the place in affluent areas and ‘working class’ areas. but yet again why let reality get in the way of a good moan.
Those that live in rural areas or struggling with low internet speed might want to do a quick google of Space X and Starlink. It’s going in beta testing this year for Canada, but will roll out to more countries next year.
Will you be using the existing network infrastructure or providing your own?
Like many altnets they’ll dig many of their own trenches and also make use of Openreach’s existing cable ducts to run their own fibre, where it makes sense to do so.
How do I invest.
I can’t see the monthly rental listed anywhere. Does anyone know?
Even though it will be super fast, it’s not worth paying £50 or £100 per month.
Dear Mark,
Is it expected to see people digging the roads to fit the fibre cables or do they use other techniques to spread the fibres? I haven’t noticed any work starting in Gerrards Cross yet.
Same. Hey! Broadband have announced imminent switch on of their Gigabit service too (use their postcode checker) for Gerrards Cross and Chalfont St Peter and I too haven’t seen any evidence of infrasructure being installed on Poles or on roads.
Hey Broadband have confirmed to me that there Gerrards Cross rollout is delayed until November 2020.