WeFibre Plan FTTP for 9 Rural Areas in West Wales and Cumbria
New UK ISP WeFibre, which is part of the wider Telcom Group (including sibling operator ClearFibre), has revealed to ISPreview.co.uk that they intend to deploy their new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to serve 9 rural communities in Cumbria and West Wales.
The provider, which broadly plans to target both rural and urban areas, officially launched last October 2020 alongside an ambition to bring their “full fibre” network to 1 million premises by the end of 2023 (here). A specific desire to focus on “social housing and housing associations” was also mentioned.
At the time WeFibre said the first phase of their new deployment, worth £5m, would focus on extending FTTP across 2,200 premises in Marsden (West Yorkshire) by 2021. After that they planned to build into Tameside in Greater Manchester and Blackpool, with the aim of delivering gigabit broadband speeds to a further 150,000 premises (50,000 premises and 100,000 premises respectively) by the end of next year.
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The ISP has now informed us that they’ve also been successfully awarded nine projects in Cumbria and West Wales, most of which are rural communities and will involve working with the the UK (gigabit broadband vouchers etc.) and Welsh Governments.
The 9 Full Fibre Projects
Llanybydder
Hexham
Keswick
Cwrt-Newydd
Penrhiw-pal
Nantgaredig
New Inn Cross
Llanrhystud
Llanllwni
Tan-y-groes
Homes can expect to pay from just £20 inc. VAT per month for the provider’s top 1Gbps package, while businesses will pay £50 +vat per month and benefit from enhanced support, premium installation and the latest Mesh WiFi kit.
Paul Eaton, WeFibre’s Chief Commercial Officer, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“It’s been a hard slog to get this far and a lot of time, resource and money spent, but finally, we have been successfully awarded nine projects in Cumbria and West Wales.
We will be rolling out full fibre in these areas as the interest has been extremely high from all proposals we put forward, and the interest in gigabit services from WeFibre has raised a lot of excitement.”
Charles Green, one of the local campaigners for part of the project, informed us that WeFibre’s announcement for Llanrhystud and other areas came as a “great surprise to us all” and the community has now “embraced this fantastic opportunity to be connected to a Gigabit connection.” According to Charles, the main pilot project is in Llanybydder, with others following.
People who sign-up to harness the associated demand-led Broadband Upgrade Fund can also expect to receive installation completely free of charge.
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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 and Linkedin.
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Who? Looks like another Fibre to the Press announcement.
The Telcom group has been around for a long time, so this has a lot more certainty about it.
So who is funding them? That is what I am getting at. Just looked on companies house and in June 2020 Telcom Group Ltd submitted dormant accounts. So unless they got some significant funding somewhere these plans seem a little ambitious.
The Broadband Upgrade Fund is an initiative to bring 1 Gigabit connections to rural communities and properties, a pilot scheme by DCMS.
Each property attracts £1500, with match funding from Welsh Government = £3000 per property.
I can see a lot of these smaller infrastructures networks being bought be other larger ones similar to back when there was multiple cable operators.
But you’ve got ones like B4RN that can’t be bought.
I expect the business plan of some of the smaller players is to make themseleves an attractive aquisition target for larger companies in the inevitable consolidation a few years hence.
Not strictly true re B4RN. If enough members voted for it they could demutualise. Can’t realistically see it happening any time soon though.
Building in Blackpool; not like CityFibre isn’t. I don’t see how overbuilding areas is even worth it, when there’s so many untouched gems.
No news of London developments still other parts of UK rural areas might outpace London as I said before compenies tend to think London is better connected with decent speeds but in other parts of the country there jumping way ahead of London cause they dont have decent speeds straight to installing fibre hence they get better speeds.
My younger cousin bro still cant get fibre only Adsl only some parts of his building can get fibre not full fibre only broadband companies that use Openreach.
I live in a building that can get fibre not full fibre again its openreach.
I dont see many developments in Tower Blocks only company that is pushing hard in London to install fibre in Tower Blocks, appartments larger buildings is community fibre.
That why im using 5G broadband that im getting over 100mbps on Three network
This is excellent news for all the communities covered here. A couple of corrections.
1) It would seem that there are 10 and not 9 full fibre projects, if I count the locations in the list.
2) Hexham is not in Cumbria, it’s in Northumberland, but hey I don’t care too much about that. If someone is going build a full fibre network in Hexham then I’ll sign up!!
Looking forward to hearing more.
The choices these network companies select to install FTTP seems very curious. Marsden, Tameside, and Blackpool, are no where near each other.
Question:
Would these rollouts make living in a rural area more attractive proposition?
What sort of investment could it bring to the area?
I was receiving regular weekly emails from WeFibre until around three weeks ago, asking for people to sign up. I live in a rural area of West Wales and was hoping for faster broadband from the company. Unfortunately, there are only around 35 homes and 3 businesses in the area, so I assume not enough for them to consider bidding. I would appreciate some correspondence to let me know one way or another
A bit late, but you can get fibre build-outs as a community and join a community fibre partnership with the likes of Openreach and it can be funded with rural gigabit vouchers.
You can check if you’re eligible for rural gigabit vouchers here: https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/
DCMS Project Funding Secured – Rural Community
Area SW19 – can you please confirm that the village of Talgarreg (SA44 4XB) is included please.