Wildanet Extend Full Fibre Rollout in Cornwall UK to Callington

Rural broadband ISP Wildanet, which earlier this year started their £50m rollout (here) of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in the Cornwall town of Liskeard (inc. surrounding areas within the PL14 postcode), has confirmed that the next town to benefit will be Callington.

At the last update, Wildanet claimed that about 6,000 premises are expected to be able to receive the new service in the Liskeard area, which they said should be completed by “early Autumn” 2021. By comparison, the provider aims to connect 1,400 addresses in Callington to its new network by the Spring of 2022 (In Your Area) and Torpoint will soon follow.

We note that Callington was also one of the areas that the UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme recently identified as being in need of an upgrade (here), with the Phase 1a plan stating that 40,000 to 60,000 premises in East Cornwall (including Launceston, Callington and Looe) and 30,000 to 50,000 premises in West Cornwall (including in Cambourne-Pool-Redruth and Penzance and the Isles of Scilly) could benefit.

However, it’s worth noting that Openreach’s (BT) older FTTP network already covers about half of the town, so it’s not all as digitally isolated as some reports might suggest, but there’s definitely room for improvement. We also suspect that some of Openreach’s build in the town may have used older optical kit from ECI, which could limit its top download speed to 330Mbps (here).

Matt Greaves, Wildanet’s Marketing Manager, said:

“We’ve had a great response from people in Callington wanting to find out more about our hyperfast service and the difference it will make to their homes and businesses.

For families it means a fast and reliable connection at all times across their devices, from laptops and smart phones to TVs and online gaming, and it’s great for people working from home. For businesses it means they can do more and do it faster, making them more efficient and boosting productivity.

Our teams will be out and about installing our network in Callington in the coming weeks and months.”

Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £39.95 per month (discounted to £19.99 for the first 12 months) to receive a 200Mbps (100Mbps upload) package with free installation on a 24-month term, which rises to £89.95 (discounted to £44.99) if you want their top 900Mbps (400Mbps upload) package.