ISP Community Fibre Complete Full Fibre Build in Sutton Early
London-focused broadband ISP CommunityFibre has today announced that they’ve completed an 8-month deployment of their multi-Gigabit speed capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in Sutton, which has covered all council-owned homes (social housing) across the borough.
The project was first announced at the end of last year (here) and at that time they expected the deployment to take 18-24 months to complete. Interestingly the picture they provided for this update actually shows an individual house (SDU), which is rather different from the large apartment blocks (MDUs) that they normally tackle (they did conduct an SDU trial last year).
The work was facilitated by a new wayleave agreement with Sutton Council and the related Sutton Housing Partnership (SHP). The ISP will also deliver a free public WiFi network in communal areas of independent living schemes and council-owned community buildings (these include: The Thomas Wall Centre, Shanklin Community Centre, Crownbourne Court and Milton House).
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As usual this installation comes at no cost to the Council or residents, with users only paying if they choose to sign-up with CommunityFibre.
Graeme Oxby, CEO of CommunityFibre, said:
“With many of us now working from home, remote schooling, streaming TV or turning to online gaming for entertainment – and actually using a mix of all of these at once – the demand for fast broadband is ever increasing. Running our networks and ensuring that more and more residents in Sutton are able to connect to the outside world is of the utmost importance to us.
We believe that everyone deserves better broadband, therefore our packages are affordable with no surprise price rises throughout any of our contracts. Our approach will be crucial to help build a more inclusive digital future for Sutton and across London communities.”
Councillor Sunita Gordon, Sutton’s Lead Member for Resources, added:
“Access to 100% Full Fibre Broadband will make a huge difference to residents and businesses across Sutton.
With social distancing now becoming more prominent in this unprecedented time, these quality internet connections will help support the increasing number of people who are relying on the internet for work, education and entertainment.”
Packages on CF’s network tend to start at £20 per month for a symmetrical speed 50Mbps service with unlimited usage and a free router, which rises to just £49 for their top 920Mbps tier (average peak time speed).
All of this comes shortly after the provider announced a major investment of £400m to help fuel a huge expansion of their FTTP network across the UK’s capital city (here), which will see them reach 1 million premises by 2023.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Why do people in social housing need full fibre? The people who will likely be able to pay for the faster speeds likely own their purchased homes and are decently salaried in order to want or need full gigabit both ways which this provides… this seems like virtue signalling.
Perhaps it just easier to deploy in these areas or dwellings?
Installation is at no cost to the council or residents.
Well it is easier and cheaper if the council let you use CCTV/traffic control ducts and give you a single wayleave agreement.
That way you don’t have to waste stacks on legal or PIA charges to OR. Sure they still pay for the duct access but usually less than PIA.