Jurassic Fibre Prep 1Gbps Broadband for Honiton and Taunton

Full fibre UK broadband ISP Jurassic Fibre, which plans to cover 350,000 premises with a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in South West England (here and here), has confirmed that they’ll start to expand outside of Devon and into Somerset, with Honiton and Taunton being the next two areas to benefit.

At present most of JF’s initial deployment has focused upon Devon in England and the area to the East of Exeter, including parts of Exmouth, Clyst Honiton, Clyst St George, Clyst St Mary, Ebford, Exton, Farringdon, Aylesbeare, Lympstone, Sowton Village, Woodbury and Woodbury Salterton.

The operator claims to have grown rapidly in the last year, not least by recruiting 140 employees and expanding its network to cover over 14,000 premises (residential and business), although we don’t know how many of those are classed as live and ready for service. The work is on-going and they expect to hit 20,000 premises “over the next few months.”

Earlier this month we reported that the provider was imminently due to expand into Somerset, followed by Dorset (here). Today the operator has confirmed that their next roll-out locations will include the East Devon market town of Honiton (population of c.12,000) and the large Somerset town of Taunton (population of c.69,000). More locations will follow over the next couple of years (we’ve already seen them working in Bridgwater).

Michael Maltby, Jurassic Fibre CEO and East Devon resident, says:

“Honiton represents a new phase in our journey and signifies a major step forward in our plans to improve digital connectivity in the South West.

Our investment in the town includes the purchase of a warehouse building to support our network build across East Devon and Somerset.”

Phil Twiss, Devon County Councillor for Honiton and Feniton, said:

“For a long time, we have recognised the need for faster broadband in Honiton and so it is extremely positive news that Jurassic Fibre has announced plans to extend their network to the town.”

Honiton is a good pick for JF since the area doesn’t really have any gigabit-capable broadband networks. The story in Taunton is a little bit more complicated because Openreach have already deployed a lot of their ultrafast hybrid fibre G.fast technology in the town and they’ve recently done some FTTP too, with more planned (here). Suffice to say that it’ll be interesting to see how JF does against Openreach’s full fibre network.

Customers typically pay from £25 per month (first 2 months free) for an unlimited 30Mbps (10Mbps upload) package and up to £95 for their top 950Mbps (200Mbps upload) tier for a short monthly rolling contract. Standard installation is free, although some “non-standard” installs may cost £250.