Rural UK ISP Alncom Secures Investment to Boost FTTP Rollout UPDATE

Alnwick-based broadband ISP Alncom, which has built a mix of rural-focused Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based networks, has today announced that they’ve secured an unspecified funding boost from strategic investors at Railsite Telecom to support their future expansion.

At present they’re still a fairly small operation, but despite that they have already managed to deploy their networks across various rural parts of Northumberland and Durham in England. The provider’s most recent FTTP build has been in their home town of Alnwick, albeit initially only covering 100 premises (the town itself is home to around 8,000).

Until now most of the funding for their new FTTP project has come from the Government’s rural gigabit broadband voucher scheme, as well as some private investment from Alncom. But in order to “rapidly develop” the ISP has been hunting for additional investment and they appear to have found just that through Railsite Telecom.

Sadly, the announcement doesn’t reveal precisely how much investment has been secured or what their future rollout plan will be, but we’ll no doubt hear more about that in the near future. As part of their growth strategy, the provider has appointed a new Operations Director, Dave Swanston, who will be in charge of the new build program. Railsite’s Chairman, Andy Elliman, will also be joining Alncom’s Board.

Mike Surrey, MD of Railsite Telecom, said:

“We were impressed from the start with Alncom’s track record in ultrafast rural broadband in the North East. As a company they deliver at every level and their reputation is outstanding. It complements our expertise improving mobile coverage in Northumberland for railway passengers and rural communities. Put simply, it was a perfect fit”.

Stephen Pinchen, Managing Director of Alncom, said:

“This is a great success story for the community that will improve local telecoms, internet connectivity and provide jobs and investment into the North East. Our expertise combined with Railsite’s industry heavyweight experience is an exciting development for the company. The aim now will be to penetrate further into the hardest and most challenging rural locations, with full fibre making the North East one of the best-connected parts of the UK”.

Otherwise, the price of their most popular residential unlimited FTTP broadband package is £24.99 for a 100Mbps service. However, it’s not clear from their website what other full fibre packages are available.

UPDATE 1:31pm

The provider informs us that their plan involves rolling out a “full fibre” GPON network across over 30 Northumberland villages, plus 12 projects in Durham and 6 projects in the Scottish Borders. More details will follow in due course.