Jurassic Fibre Add Yeovil to Somerset FTTP Broadband Rollout
Full fibre UK broadband ISP Jurassic Fibre has today announced that the South Somerset town of Yeovil, which is home to a population of 45,000 people, will be one of the next to benefit from their ongoing deployment of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.
At present JF is being supported by a £250m commitment from Fern Trading Limited and has an ambition to cover 350,000 premises across South West England (here and here). Until recently most of their early construction had focused upon parts of Devon, although they’ve also started to move into Somerset (here) and Dorset should soon follow.
The provider is now home to 170 staff and their network already covers 14,000 premises, which “over the next few months” should grow to 20,000. The good news is that another Somerset town has just joined their deployment plan, Yeovil, and construction has already started.
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The news shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise because the ISP last year indicated that they expected to target Yeovil, as well as Dorchester, Weymouth and a few other areas (here).
Michael Maltby, Jurassic Fibre CEO and Founder, said:
“Following the success of our roll-out in East Devon, we are extremely pleased to be expanding our footprint to Yeovil and South Somerset, improving connectivity for residents and businesses and anchoring the area’s position as one of the most attractive places to work and live in the South West.”
Joe Walsh, South Somerset District Council, said:
“We are delighted that Jurassic Fibre has chosen to expand its network to Yeovil, an area desperately in need of better digital connectivity. Reliable broadband is more important now than ever and the availability of ultrafast full fibre will be a huge benefit for people living and working in the local community.”
At present Jurassic Fibre doesn’t have much competition at the gigiabit level to worry about in Yeovil, although in July 2020 Openreach (BT) confirmed that the town was also on their FTTP deployment plan (here) and so that situation won’t remain stable for long. Locals probably won’t relish the disruption from two lots of noisy civil engineering work, but in the future they may benefit from the additional competition.
Customers typically pay from £25 per month (first 2 months free) for an unlimited 30Mbps (10Mbps upload) package on JF 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.
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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If they fancy coming 20miles north of Yeovil and putting it in my village that’d be great!
Sigh, I’m about 12 miles from Yeovil, if only…. FTTC it is till 5G shows up.
Like buses
Terrible, no choice. I’ll be waiting for Openreach so I’m not stuck with JurASSic fibre.
Have you had or used Jurassic Fibre?
Bonkers two fibres or more down the street. Some towns can’t even get FTTC.
The competition should be at the ISP level and services. The ISPs should rent the fibre from whichever net/altnet cables up the town first.
Are you saying we refuse consent for a commercial operator to invest, not a very open market you’re proposing.
Government owned network which private company’s rent from would most likely be the better option
The provision of broadband in the UK smacks of the 19th century railways. Competing lines and waste of resources. When electricity was privatised no-one suggested that a new provider lay fresh cables. The government could have licensed network providers, whose returns could be regulated by Ofcom to provide a fair return on capital. ISP’s could have then acquired capacity. Instead we get wasteful overbuild and a gigabit target which places us at the back of the pack.
Have there been enough sizeable places with a choice of broadband connections to houses and small offices for long enough for to be some solid statistical evidence as to wether or not broadband becomes cheaper or more reliable or faster?
NB People who ask may well pay less than the obvious published tariff.
Also there is now appreciable competition from the mobile network operators with data over a mobile signal – Three are apparently offering an unlimited 5G data SIM for 5 pounds a month. Now what would be the best thing to put it in? Dongle? Router?