FullFibre Ltd Sees Build Rate Near 15,000 Premises Per Month UPDATE

Network builder FullFibre Limited, which aims to deploy a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover “at least” 500,000 UK premises by 2025, has revealed that they’re getting close to achieving a build rate of 15,000 UK premises passed per month (nearly 50,000 total premises passed).

FullFibre hasn’t previously revealed how far they’ve got toward achieving their target. “Our team have been working hard over the past few months and have passed 15,000 premises. This is an incredible achievement for Full Fibre as we get closer to reaching our goal of connecting over half a million homes and businesses with fibre by 2025,” said the operator yesterday via LinkedIn. But this actually means the monthly build rate, not the total.

The operator, which runs its network as a wholesale platform via Fibre Heroes for other UK ISPs to adopt (e.g. SWS, HFL Broadband, Connect Me to 2 Full Fibre, ANLX, Air Broadband, Cloud Wireless and Fibrehop), is currently deploying across a growing number of towns in counties such as Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Surrey, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire (rollout lists here and here).

Admittedly, they’ve still got a long way to go, but 15,000 passed per month is a big achievement. The company tends to focus on “forgotten market towns” and areas (i.e. often those with between 5,000 and 40,000 premises) that might otherwise have been left behind by the national FTTP rollout. However, some of their towns are also being targeted by rivals.

UPDATE 29th September 2021

The operator’s original statement made it sound like they had passed a total of 15,000 premises, but they’re actually getting close to this as a monthly build rate, which is much more significant.