WeFibre Unveil FTTP Rollout for Northumberland, Cumbria and Wales

UK ISP WeFibre (Telcom Group), which recently raised £63m of funding from Gresham House, has today announced its plan to “aggressively” rollout a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to rural areas across Northumberland, Cumbria, North West England, as well as Central and North Wales.

At the start of this year we reported that the ISP (here), which has previously stated an ambition to cover 1 million UK premises by the end of 2023 (here), would initially focus on areas like Marsden (West Yorkshire), Blackpool (Lancashire), and they’ve now added Bellingham (Northumberland). WeFibre also revealed that they would deploy across a number of rural communities in Cumbria and West Wales, supported by the gigabit voucher scheme.

However, the provider has today revealed a lot more detail about their overall rollout plan. The company will start by extending their network along the A69 corridor in Northumberland during the remainder of 2021 and into early 2022. Their plans cover Haltwhistle, Haydon Bridge, Acomb, Oakwood, Fourstones, Hexham, Corbridge, Wylam and the various hamlets nestled between these communities.

In Cumbria, WeFibre plans to start build in Keswick with ongoing plans to grow across the county during 2022. Meanwhile, across Wales, they’re about to deploy a network in Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, with projects due to start towards the end of August 2021 and throughout the remainder of Q3 and Q4 of 2021 in Llanbydder, Llanrhystud, Llanwrda, Cross Inn, Cwrt-Newydd, Pont-rhyd-y-groes and Pontrhydfendigaid (we’ve previously covered those).

Shaun Gibson, CEO of Telcom Group, said:

“We are delighted to have secured the investment funding which has enabled us to rapidly commence our network build. Our plans have been in incubation over the past 9 months and so are highly developed and ready for implementation. They are aggressive, but achievable, allowing us to accelerate our mission to create a more connected world by building full-fibre networks, reducing costs, and empowering communities.”

As part of this WeFibre also intends to establish new local distribution and operational bases in Central Wales and Northumberland, which will complement their existing office headquarters and operational depot in Manchester, which serves the northwest of England. The move will also help to boost local employment in those two new areas.

Resident customers can expect to pay from just £20 inc. VAT per month for the provider’s top 1Gbps package – with a free installation and router (at present this seems to be the only option they offer), which is staggeringly cheap given their focus on rural connectivity. Clearly, they’re priced aggressively in order to pull customers away from rival networks and grow their base as quickly as possible.