UK ISP Swish Fibre, which is building their 10Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 250,000 premises in the Home Counties of England, has just begun to deploy their service across the next batch of towns including Ascot, Chinnor, Sunningdale, Godalming and Thame.
The locations form part of last year’s a list of 33 towns where they intend to deploy across the Home Counties of England (SF’s rollout plan). The operator is already building in parts of Buckinghamshire (e.g. Marlow, Gerrards Cross and Bourne End) and they’ve since moved into Surrey (Farnham). The aim is to be building or live in 10 of those towns by June 2021 (achieved by today’s news), before breaking ground in a total of 20 towns by the end of 2021.
We note that three of the four new towns announced today will see the operator moving into new counties, with Ascot and Sunningdale representing the first build towns in Berkshire, alongside Chinnor and Thame in Oxfordshire. Godalming joins Farnham as Swish further grows its footprint in Surrey.
Much of this work is being funded by Swish Fibre’s owner Fern Trading (they also own Jurassic Fibre in the South West of England), which has a “long-term funding deal” that could enable them to unlock £250m of investment as part of their plans (here).
Alistair Goulden, CMO of Swish Fibre, said:
“The roll-out plans for Swish have been all-consuming, so it was a rare opportunity for Conor and I to visit the crews on the ground together. Spending time with Mo and Terry in Ascot last week represented a great chance to review what Swish Fibre has achieved over the past twelve months. Operations are running extremely smoothly, giving great confidence to move forward into new towns at pace.
I’d actively encourage anyone wishing to experience the UK’s fastest residential broadband network to visit our newly opened Swish Hub at 6 Market Square in Marlow. With speeds in excess of 9500Mbps, our team are on-hand to showcase and discuss how the technology can help people work, surf and play.”
As we’ve noted before, Swish will face competition from rival gigabit networks in some of the towns they’re targeting (e.g. Gigaclear in Sevenoaks, Virgin Media in East Grinstead and Hey!Broadband + Openreach in Godalming). Indeed, in some areas (e.g. Godalming) they may end up facing more than one rival with a gigabit capable broadband network, but we assume they wouldn’t be building unless it made sense to do so.
Customers typically pay from £45 per month for their unlimited 400Mbps (average speed) package, which rises to £75 if you want their top 900Mbps plan. A one-off £50 activation fee is also payable.
Swish’s 33 Rollout Locations
First 11 Locations (December 2019)
Marlow
Gerrards Cross
Beaconsfield
Flackwell Heath
Wooburn Green and Bourne End
Hazlemere
Great Missenden
Thame
Chinnor
Princes Risborough
HaddenhamNext 22 Locations (June 2020)
Alton
Ascot
Banbury
Bagshot
Bordon
Buckingham
Corsham
Cranleigh
Crawley Down
Crowborough
East Grinstead
Farnham
Godalming
Haywards Heath
Heathfield
Liphook
Lindford
Marlborough
Penn
Sevenoaks
Southwater
Uckfield
Should I be surprised that OpenReach are suddenly deploying FTTP in these areas now that the AltNets have turned up?
Openreach have already started building in Bordon, East Grinstead, Godalming and Sevenoaks
This is something i don’t understand, it is essentially that in the areas which has already deployed FTTP or there is a operator who is going to provide FTTP, another three or four vendors going in and offer the same. In areas where there is no coverage, none of them have keen interest to deploy.
A good example is High Wycombe, Half of HW virgin media has deployed, they left the other half, there is no intention to do anything, unless BT decide that it is time to do HW, that is when Virgin wakes up and decide we are going to deploy in this area as well. I am all for option but goverment approach is sporadic and idiotic.
IMHO, there is should be one company or multiple who provide the dark fiber access, very much like OpenReach. They should provide this as a public service at cost with no profits involved or if there is profit, it has to be limited and only reinsvested in to the bussines and further deployment.
Like with mobilephone, diffrent vendors can buy access to the dark fiber and provide service on top, this applies to Electricity, Phone and should also be applied to Internet access.
Above suggestion is both cost effective and not least you only dig once and not 10 times because 10 different FTTP provides each puts its own cable.
Imagine if we would have 10 M6 built, what a wast of time, effort and mostly cost.
Just a few silly ideas from me.