toob Extend FTTP Broadband to 200k Premises in South England

Portsmouth-based UK ISP toob has today announced that their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network will be extended to cover a further 200,000 homes and business across Hampshire and Surrey, which will build on their existing deployment in the port city of Southampton.

The new operator, which was setup by a group of Vodafone’s former directors and is being supported by an initial investment of £75m (here), began their first build across 100,000 premises in Southampton last year – before connecting their first customers in December 2019. Since then they’ve made steady progress, despite facing competition from Virgin Media’s rival 1Gbps service.

Prior to today the company had previously expressed longer-term plans to expand beyond their first city and aspires to cover a total of over 1 million properties across the South of England. The good news is that toob has now “commenced detailed planning” across 10 towns in Hampshire and Surrey.

Some of these locations include Camberley, Farnborough and Guildford, where they will face competition from some existing rivals just like they did in Southampton.

Next Full Fibre Locations
Aldershot
Ash
Camberley
Farnborough
Frimley
Frimley
Green
Guildford
Mytchett
West Byfleet
Woking

Build activity on this phase is due to start in Spring 2021, with the first customers then being connected by Summer 2021.

Nick Parbutt, CEO and Founder of toob, said:

“We have always viewed the deployment of fullfibre networks as an economic and social necessity and the current challenges we are facing only reinforces this belief. With the announcement of our next locations, I am delighted that we can bring the benefits of hyperspeed broadband to more families, business and communities.”

Sadly, toob’s announcement makes no mention of how many premises they’ve been able to cover in their first year of deployment, which makes it difficult to judge their progress. But by looking at recent work they appear to have completed somewhere around 10-20% of their initial rollout and will still be in the ramp-up phase of build.

The operator will also need significantly more investment in order to fuel the next phase of their build. We assume they wouldn’t be announcing this plan unless they had already secured a firm commitment from their investors to help cover those costs.

Customers can expect to pay just £25 inc. VAT per month to access toob’s top unlimited 900Mbps+ (average) symmetric speed service on an 18-month minimum contract term (£29 thereafter), which is accompanied by free installation, a wireless router and unlimited usage. The pricing remains incredibly low for a commercial FTTP provider on a Gigabit tier and that is most likely intended to attract strong take-up (i.e. pulling customers away from rivals).

UPDATE 9:08am

toob informs us that they now expect their rollout in Southampton to conclude by mid-2022, which is roughly 6 months later than originally expected.