Broadband ISP Fibrus Extend FTTP Rollout to Northern England

Belfast-based ISP Fibrus, which has spent the past couple of years deploying a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across Northern Ireland, has today announced that their build is being extended to include 300,000 premises in the North of England (i.e. Cumbria, Northumberland and North Yorkshire).

The company, which is backed by M&G’s Infracapital and holds the £165m Project Stratum (here) contract for N.Ireland (they’ve already covered 50,000 premises in N.I and that will double by the end of 2021), is already building their first network in England – starting with the historic Penrith market town in Cumbria’s rural Eden Valley area.

The current plan is then to extend this in order to cover 300,000 premises (homes and businesses) in “118 regional towns” across parts of Cumbria, Northumberland and North Yorkshire within the next 3 years (i.e. by mid to late 2024).

Sadly, the announcement doesn’t tell us how much funding has been committed to their build in England or name any other rollout locations, although they do make clear an intention to bid for contracts as part of the UK Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit programme – this reflects future expansion beyond their committed rollout to 118 region towns.

Conal Henry, Fibrus Co-Founder and Chair, said:

“People living in small towns and rural areas of the UK are tired of having no choice when it comes to broadband networks. For years they’ve been hearing only promises of proper broadband from the phone companies. Fibrus has shown in Northern Ireland that we can take on the rural network monopoly and win, so we plan to do exactly the same thing here in the North of England.

We will build in 118 small towns in Cumbria and across the North East. Beyond that, we will be bidding for BDUK Project Gigabit subsided programmes that will be launched in the coming months. If we are successful, Fibrus will deliver full fibre broadband networks to a large swathe of rural and regional England, areas which have previously only ever been offered an upgraded phone line from the incumbent.”

Customers of the provider typically pay from £39.99 per month (currently discounted to £19.99) for an unlimited 150Mbps package with a router and free installation, which rises to £84.99 per month for their top 1000Mbps tier. We believe these are on 24-month contract terms.

The biggest challenge for Fibrus is they’ll be entering a market in England that is already chocked full of alternative network providers, although gigabit-capable network coverage in rural and suburban areas is still weak. The operator’s first target of Penrith is also on Openreach’s FTTP rollout plan (they’ve already started to rollout), although it’s possible that Fibrus could try to build faster and take a first mover advantage.