Lightspeed Broadband Start FTTP Rollout in Lincolnshire and Norfolk

Lincolnshire-based UK ISP Lightspeed Broadband, which recently burst on to the scene with a plan to invest £300m into a large deployment of 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology across the East of England, has today kicked off its build work in several towns across South Lincolnshire and West Norfolk.

The operator, which is backed by an initial investment of £55m from an international investment consortium – including AtmosClear Investments and Kompass Kapital, initially aims to cover 100,000 homes by the end of 2022. The funding agreement also includes an “opportunity” to raise this up to £300m as work progresses.

The plan for all this was first unveiled in February 2021 (here) and yet, after only two months, work is today already said to be starting in ten towns, including Boston, Bourne, Holbeach, King’s Lynn and South Wootton, Long Sutton, Market Deeping, Skegness, Sleaford, Spalding and Stamford.

Specialist fibre infrastructure build partners, Plancast and RCU Solutions, have been appointed to support the rollout. So far, a total of 100 engineers have already been deployed and 30 new jobs will be created during the build, with an emphasis on employing, developing and training local people. Build teams will operate from depots in Stamford, King’s Lynn and Boston, and the network will be managed from a new Lightspeed HQ in Spalding.

Dave Axam, Operations Director for Lightspeed Broadband, said:

“We’re moving at ‘lightspeed’ to bring our FTTP network to the region to unlock the digital and economic potential of underserved communities in the East of England, starting in these ten towns.

We are looking forward to working in partnership with Plancast and RCU Solutions, who both have extensive experience in designing, planning and building telecoms’ infrastructure in a sustainable, efficient and high-quality way. Significant investment in digital mapping tools, and the strength and scalability of our partners, has enabled us to move rapidly, mobilise more than one hundred engineers and deploy simultaneously across ten towns.

We will be collaborating with the local authorities and communities in each town to build the network and to minimise disruption and environmental impact.”

Stephen Brookes, Lincolnshire County Council, said:

“The county council-led onlincolnshire programme has dramatically improved the county’s broadband infrastructure over the last few years, and more people than ever before can now enjoy superfast speeds. These highly significant improvements on the back of a massive investment by Lightspeed will build on that good work, greatly benefiting those Lincolnshire towns included in the roll out, who will receive some of the fastest speeds in the county.

Ultrafast speeds and the reliability gigabit broadband can offer will bring huge benefits to residents and businesses in these areas, and it’s great to see Lightspeed progressing so quickly.”

Despite being fairly new to the market, Lightspeed Broadband appears to be both well-funded and managed by a team with plenty of experience in the telecoms sector (many are former BT and TalkTalk figures), including CEO Steve Haines, COO Dave Axam and CCO Joanne King.

However, one difficulty they may face is that some of their initial towns are already in the process of being covered by rival gigabit networks, such as Boston where Openreach have a fair bit of FTTP (they’ve also got a lot of the inferior G.fast in nearby Skegness too). But existing coverage is often patchy and some towns have no real gigabit options, which presents an opportunity for Lightspeed to grow a first mover advantage.

At the time of writing Lightspeed’s website still doesn’t mention any packages or prices, but those details will no doubt follow once the first customers start to go live a little later this year.