Borderlink Detail Full Fibre Rollout for North England and Scotland

Wireless broadband ISP BorderLink, which covers rural areas across Northumberland, Cumbria and the Scottish Borders, has today published the first solid details of the rollout plan for their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in the same area – with services being sold via their GoFibre sub-brand.

Back in April 2021 we revealed that BorderLink had secured a big £10.5m funding boost from the Gresham House Investment Fund (BSIF) to help with their plans (here), which is also expected to help create 80 new skilled jobs across their areas of work. Sadly, that announcement didn’t give us is any idea of their future rollout plan, but this has now changed.

The operator will initially focus their early rollout of full fibre services across parts of the East Lothian, Mid Lothian and Angus regions in Scotland. The physical build is understood to have started in January 2021 and the initial aim will be to cover 100,000 premises (homes and businesses) across “several rural towns” (no clear timescale is given for this).

In Lothian the first towns include: Dunbar, Haddington, North Berwick, Cockenzie, Tranent, Prestonpans, Gullane, Longniddry, East Saltoun, Pencaitland. Orders are now being accepted/processed in these locations and customers should “expect delivery over the next 1-6 months,” depending on location and complexity etc. The list of towns in Angus is due to be “released shortly“.

Alex Cacciamani, CEO, said:

“Borderlink has a unique opportunity to target northern England and Scotland with high quality, next generation 10Gbps full fibre broadband, starting with Lothian and Angus. I’m pleased to be announcing the first phase of our build programme in what promises to be an exciting phase of the company’s growth and development, there is much more to come.”

Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £35 per month on a 24-month contract for a download speed of 120Mbps (20Mbps upload) with unlimited usage and free installation, which will rise to £150 per month for their top 2Gbps (100Mbps upload) tier. Only a small number of providers, such as B4RN, CommunityFibre and Zzoomm, are currently offering packages with downloads of faster than a gigabit.

However, we note that their “unlimited” usage claim comes attached to a vague Fair Usage Policy (FUP), which is generally something that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) tends to frown upon (i.e. any speed restrictions must be clearly stated). The FUP mentions “slower” speeds at peak times for P2P, large file downloads and newsgroup usage.

In addition, it warns that “customers who download large amounts at peak times regularly will have restrictions placed on their accounts to reduce their download speeds at peak times.”