Alncom and RunFibre Extend Full Fibre to South Gloucestershire

Alnwick-based UK rural broadband ISP Alncom and new Bristol-based ISP RunFibre have joined forces in order to extend the reach of their joint gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which was already available to remote parts of Northumberland and Durham, but is now growing into South Gloucestershire.

At present both providers are still fairly small, although Alncom recently managed to secure a key funding boost from strategic investors at Railsite Telecom and that’s expected to fuel their future expansion (here). Alncom’s most recent GPON FTTP build has been in their home town of Alnwick, but they’ve also built across the College Valley, Powburn, Ellingham, Ingram Valley, Warkworth, Acklington and into the Scottish Borders area.

As part of their growth strategy and funding boost, Alncom also appointed a new Director, Dave Swanston, who was put in charge of the new build program. Except Dave isn’t only Alncom’s Ops Director, he is also CEO and co-owner of his own provider – RunFibre – with his brother and cousin. Consequently, the two companies have started working together in order to support their respective projects.

The partnership means that all RunFibre FTTP areas will be on Alncom’s wholesale network. RunFibre will also use backhaul connectivity from Alncom, while Alncom will supply all of the active kit and manage the network monitoring. In return, RunFibre will also build infrastructure, market and sales, and control the whole CRM suite (customer relationship management). RunFibre will also be doing the installations and maintenance.

Dave Swanston said:

“Alncom have honed their rural broadband skills over the past 15 years in some of the rural locations in the country in Northumberland and County Durham and the collaboration is a huge step forward for rural South Gloucester. This will genuinely change lives.”

The first villages in South Gloucestershire to benefit from this and gain access to their full fibre network will be Hawkesbury Upton, Inglestone Common and surrounding properties. The new project is said by RunFibre to be the first of many joint ventures with Alncom and will cover nearly 600 residential and business premises in the area, while also making use of rural gigabit vouchers.

Work on the new build is due to start towards the end of this month and will involve a fair bit of Openreach’s Physical Infrastructure Access product (i.e. running new fibre through and over existing cable ducts and poles).