ISP Ecom Brings Gigabit Broadband to Bucks Village of Hulcott UPDATE

Rural UK ISP Ecom, which is busy deploying a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to remote rural parts of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, has just put their network live across the tiny rural village of Hulcott, outside of Aylesbury.

The provider is currently aiming to cover 2,500 premises with their new “full fibre” network by the end of 2021 and the addition of Hulcott should help toward that goal, albeit only a little (the village has a population of around 110). Ecom has also deployed into a number of other nearby communities, such as Ledburn, Wingrave, Crafton, Creslow, Mentmore and Blackthorn (near Bicester).

As before, this build has been achieved with help from the Government’s rural gigabit voucher scheme. Homes on the new network typically take packages from 300Mbps (£36 inc. VAT per month) and this goes all the way up to 1Gbps (£96) on a 12-month term. Meanwhile, installation costs are generally covered by the vouchers.

Sam Shaw, Ecom’s Sales and Marketing Executive, said:

“The community of Hulcott called out to us to bring them into the 21st century and ensure the village wasn’t left behind from a technology perspective, the uptake and support throughout this project has been tremendous with the village and it’s populace, where required the co-operation has been first class, with a friendly and amicable approach.

It’s been a pleasure to work with the resident and we welcome them to our network.”

Colin Rickard, Sports Data Services Ltd, said:

“Great effort from the ECom team, they have been truly outstanding in successfully delivering Ultrafast FTTP to Hulcott. Inevitably there is a degree of disruption involved in groundworks but this has been kept to an absolute minimum and the team have been professional and courteous at all times.

Utilising the Government Rural Gigabit Voucher Scheme plus a contribution from the Bucks CC Gigabit Top Up Fund meant no upfront infrastructure cost to residents, an unbelievably good deal. Thanks ECom, I can’t recommend you highly enough.”

It’s worth pointing out that Ecom’s network is surrounded by rival FTTP deployments from Openreach and Gigaclear, although they seem to be doing a good job of going into the smaller patches that those players have missed (Hulcott itself sits in-between two of Openreach’s builds). The next communities on their deployment hit list will be Hillesden and Steeple Claydon, which are both a bit further away from the bulk of their current patch.

UPDATE 24th March 2021

Added an extra comment above.