ISP Upp Pick Light Source for UK Full Fibre Broadband Rollout

Broadband ISP and network builder Upp has today informed ISPreview.co.uk that they’ve partnered with infrastructure developer Light Source to help support their £1bn project to rollout a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 1 million UK premises in Eastern England by 2025.

The initial rollout, which started last month (here), will target towns across Norfolk and Lincolnshire, with Stamford (Lincolnshire) and Diss (Norfolk) being the first to benefit. But at the time, it was unclear which civil engineering firms would be supporting their build or what other locations they might reach. Despite this, the initial build aims to cover 50 towns (c.300,000 homes) in the two counties by the end of 2022.

Some of our readers have since spotted engineers working for RKM Utilities, which when approached were found to be operating on behalf of Light Source and building for Upp, mostly around their first location of Stamford, as well as other locations, such as Bourne and Market Deeping (these have not yet been officially announced). Upp has now confirmed the partnership.

Upp has also employed some of their own local field engineers to carry out installations and maintenance, although they’ll still need to work with contractors in order to achieve their coverage targets (i.e. it takes a long time to properly train up a fibre engineer).

Eryl Stafford, Upp’s Chief Operations Officer, said:

“We are thrilled to be working with Light Source. We chose them because they strive for excellence in their delivery of FTTH infrastructure, but also align with Upp on so many of our values. There’s an exciting future ahead as we continue our roll-out alongside Light Source throughout the East of England.”

Steve Hill, MD of Light Source, said:

“The team at Light Source are delighted to secure this partnership. Upp have some very ambitious plans and we are privileged to be part of their journey to rapidly rollout fibre to communities and businesses.”

At present the operator’s first goal is to reach 30,000 premises by the end of 2021, which is admittedly a long way from their ambitious future targets, but for such a new provider it would still be impressive to reach that level in such a short space of time.

Upp are currently offering both a 300Mbps and 900Mbps (symmetric speeds) product at £40 and £60 per month, respectively, across 12 months of service. The first 3 months of service are free, as well as free setup and installation. You can also expect to receive a Linksys Velop Whole Home Intelligent Mesh WiFi 6 (AX4200) router, alongside UK support.

The biggest challenge for Upp is that they’ll be deploying into some of the same locations as rival operators, such as County Broadband and Lightspeed Broadband. Other operators, such as B4RN, Openreach and Virgin Media, are also operating in some of the same areas where Upp may end up targeting in the future.