Hampstead Fibre Plans FTTP Broadband Rollout in London UPDATE
A new UK market entrant called Hampstead Fibre, which was only incorporated in late May 2021 and doesn’t yet appear to have its own website, has cropped up with a plan to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across parts of London and then beyond.
The development was spotted as part of the company’s application for Code Powers from Ofcom, which are often used to help speed-up their deployment of new fibre optic infrastructure and cut costs, not least by reducing the number of licenses needed for street works. It can also help facilitate access to run fibre through or over Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles (PIA).
The application doesn’t reveal much, just that they intend to deploy an FTTP “network initially in London and latterly in other locations across the UK.” We assume the Hampstead area might be their initial focus, but nothing has been confirmed.. yet. The company’s sole Director is listed as Dr (Annie) Yanyan Yang, which is an unfamiliar name to us.
We note that Dr (Annie) Yanyan Yang is also the director of a second company called Hampstead Fibre Holdings, which was setup a day before the aforementioned company and exists at the same address. The provider, assuming it actually gets some build going, will most likely face stiff competition from Openreach (BT), Virgin Media (VMO2), G.Network, CommunityFibre and Hyperoptic in London.
UPDATE 4:44pm
Annie has made contact with ISPreview.co.uk and informs us that they do have a holding website – https://www.hampsteadfibre.com. We hope to be able to add some more details soon.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
« Business ISP Air IT Gobbles MFG UK and INFINITY IT Solutions
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (5508)
- BT (3513)
- Politics (2535)
- Openreach (2296)
- Business (2260)
- Building Digital UK (2243)
- FTTC (2042)
- Mobile Broadband (1971)
- Statistics (1787)
- 4G (1662)
- Virgin Media (1617)
- Ofcom Regulation (1459)
- Fibre Optic (1393)
- Wireless Internet (1389)
- FTTH (1381)
ugh yay… look another fibre thingy, for rich people, in London (well Hampstead is pretty much London). meanwhile, in the rest of the country where the Altnets aren’t falling over people who call it ” T’internet ” we’re stuck here with BT super ultra megafast .. aka 30 mbit.
Awesome. Hey altnets… can you install fibre in places that aren’t london or places that can’t pronounce “internet” correctly? thanks.
Fibre availability in London is actually pretty terrible due to the difficult nature of installing fibre in a crowded city. BT are avoiding most of it and leaving it up to the altnets.
The vast majority of posts on this very website are about programs in areas other than London…
@Matt it depends on what parts of London you refer to, suburban London is certainly seeing increased Openreach FTTP deployment, though as you say the more central high-density areas are not seeing as much.
Yawn 😛
Article after article after article with how middle of nowhere place outside London is getting gigabit fibre for £40pm and yet one of the rare London-centric articles has a “urgh, it’s London” response as per usual.
Given we have 14M+ in the metropolitan region, generating over 20% of national GDP I don’t think it’s expecting too much to expect to see more articles on FTTP in London – yet we don’t because providers are not falling over each other to deliver it here. Much of London has very poor access to FTTP.
Where I am in SW London Openreach have installed FTTP in one exchange. Yes we have VM, but we are served by the old United Artists/Telewest network which always seems to be lagging behind on everything. And of course … VM … so …