Country Connect Bring Full Fibre to Ponthir and Caerleon in Wales UPDATE

UK ISP Country Connect, which started life back in 2016 by offering a Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband network to remote rural communities in South Wales, has over the past few months begun building out their own gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network and is about to start connecting their first customers.

So far the provider hasn’t said much about their future plans and instead seem happy to carry on without putting too much effort into the promotional side of things, which in today’s world of big fibre build announcements is actually kind of refreshing (less boasting, more delivery). The FTTP deployment hasn’t even been mentioned on their blog page. Nevertheless, progress is being made.

After training up some engineers and getting them accustomed to Openreach’s Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which enables rival operators to harness existing cable ducts and poles in order to run their own fibre (this can help to reduce deployment costs), Country Connect is now making some real progress on their first full fibre build.

The first two locations to benefit include the modest sized village of Ponthir on the boundary of Monmouthshire and Newport, which is home to about 1,500 people. On top of that the ISP are also deploying across the town of Caerleon just outside Newport, which is home to over 8,000 people. Both locations have been neglected by gigabit-capable rivals, although Openreach (BT) have deployed slower G.fast tech across most of the area.

Country Connect’s deployment appears to be partly demand-led and those who sign-up before they start building may be able to benefit from a free installation (worth c.£149). Sadly, the package details and prices for their own FTTP network aren’t yet shown on their website, but they have been promoting them to locals.

Country Connect’s FTTP Packages (On-Net)

100 Mbps (Upload of 30Mbps) – £39.99 a month for 24 months (£47.99 thereafter)

300 Mbps (Upload of 70Mbps) – £49.99 a month for 24 months (£57.99 thereafter)

900 Mbps (Upload of 100Mbps) – £59.99 a month for 24 months (£67.99 thereafter)

Going forward we suspect that the ISP may face some competition from Openreach’s ongoing FTTP expansion and Spectrum Internet’s rival build, which is also about to get underway and will be operating in roughly the same sort of areas (we’re expecting some detail on that soon). Otherwise, Country Connect expect to connect their first customers “shortly.”

UPDATE 26th May 2021

Country Connect has said the ambition is to make their network available to roughly 5,000 properties by the end of this year.