London ISP G.Network Invest GBP105m in Wandsworth FTTP Rollout
UK ISP G.Network, which is investing £1bn to build a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network for homes and businesses in London (here), has announced that £105m of their funding will go toward a rollout for 100,000 premises across the borough of Wandsworth (c.230 miles of optical fibre cable).
At present the provider has already managed to cover c.200,000 premises in London, and they aim to extend that “full fibre” to reach a total of 1.4 million homes and businesses over the next 5 years (here). The latest build in Wandsworth is due to start later this month, with Battersea’s Shaftesbury ward being the first to benefit.
The new deployment should complement a parallel project with rival ISP CommunityFibre, which has seen more than 30,000 households on the Wandsworth housing estate(s) enjoying access to similar technology.
Cllr Rory O’Broin said:
“This is tremendous news for local residents and businesses, who will soon be able to enjoy some of the country’s fastest and most reliable broadband services. This is just one way the council is working with its partners to improve people’s connectivity, provide new opportunities and help them get on in life.”
Credits to Marc for spotting this development.
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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A map of the area to be covered in Battersea’s Shaftesbury ward is at https://wandsworth.gov.uk/news/news-may-2021/battersea-chosen-for-launch-of-borough-s-full-fibre-ultrafast-internet-rollout/
This is a great scheme! It appears to be symmetrical speeds too.
Long term prices:
£28 for 300/100 (BT=49.99 for 300/49)
£36 for 600/300
£48 for 900/900 (BT=59.99 for 900/110)
Yet OpenReach insist on rolling out their poorer inferior substandard FTTP network which provides unsuitable upload speeds which really doesn’t meet people’s needs.
BT are extortionate. OpenReach have got this all terribly wrong in comparison to AltNets.
Time and competition will tell.
I’m inclined to agree with you.
Upload will become the marketing differentiating factor.
I think Openreach are just being conservative because if they ran a congested wholesale network they’d get the attention of Ofcom fairly quickly. Afaik there’s nothing technically different about the G.Network deployment that makes it more suitable to symmetric services, so there’s no wasted build effort on the part of Openreach.
Offering a gigabit symmetric service on Gpon seems like a good way to give yourself problems down the road unless you’re convinced you won’t get a high take-up of the faster services, so I can sympathise with their approach.
Jonny, I can see where you are coming from and agree, 1000/1000 on a 2.5G/1.2G service split 32 ways is asking for trouble, you only get a gigabit upload on GPON after overhead in total so splitting it 32 ways is mental. However… there is a world of difference between that and offering 1G down and 115Mb up like Openreach! Surely if you are willing to contend ~1:15 on GPON downstream (i.e offering 1G down) then you should do at least the same on upstream (which is used less) offering 1G down 500Mb up – that is the product openreach should be offering on GPON IMO to balance speed and contention.
Will they cover the entirety of Wandsworth eventually?
Openreach is rolling out FTTP (finally) in Wandsworth, in Balham and South Clapham. I assume the Wandsworth exchange itself is on the list next.
Competition is always welcome.
I don’t know if OR can totally get rid of the Wandsworth exchange. It is on the list to be closed but it is a key node in the inter exchange tunnel system. So most of the block above ground can go – it is empty. But there will have to be some access to other things.
OR are slowly doing FTTP in Wandsworth but I think Hyperoptic, Community Fibre and now GNetworks have a lot more passed and connected FTTP than OR and that will stay that way for a good while.
@A_Builder interesting, thanks.
I see on the Openreach rollout spreadsheet for FTTP that “Wandsworth” is listing a total number of three exchanges in Wandsworth to be covered, currently South Clapham and Balham are on the list, so I assume Wandsworth must be next, just not announced yet. Perhaps over the next 6-12 months we might know more.
Sadly although there is Virgin Media in many areas, in others it is Openreach FTTC (currently) only. Let’s hope they get a move on soon.
£105m for only 100K properties? That equates to £1,050 per property passed, which is very expensive compared to a more typical £300-400 for urban areas.
Compare: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/05/netomnia-quietly-reveal-new-uk-fttp-broadband-rollout-areas.html
Contrary to claims by some that London is the most economical place to deploy FTTP in the known universe in some areas it’s pretty expensive.
Congested or non-existent pavements forcing use of carriageways, flagged / block paved footways, expensive traffic management, lane rental schemes, local authorities requiring very expensive reinstatement in some cases, etc, etc.
Cheapest places to build are urban areas with wide, uncongested tarmac footpaths and wide roads minimising traffic control. Bits of London certainly fall in that category but some of it isn’t so hot, especially the older and more central parts.
Nice. I wonder if they will be covering Ealing as part of their London rollout?
Haringey still in the FTTP slow lane, no info when anyone will come to this part of London
I believe Haringey will be part of g.networks rollout
https://www.g.network/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Investment-announement-13x.png
Yes, I have been in contact with them but was told it will be sometime before they arrive in Haringey.