One Year On – Zzoomm’s FTTP Broadband Goes Live in Hereford

It’s been almost a year to the day since UK ISP Zzoomm announced they’d be rolling out their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in the Cathedral City of Hereford (Herefordshire), although the build itself didn’t begin until early 2021. But the first customer connections have now gone live.

The original aim of this rollout was to “cover the entire city” via a target of 28,000 premises, although the latest update suggests that they now intend to cover 32,000 homes by the end of completion. “From Moorfield Street to Portland Street and from Canonmoor Street to Brunel Court, these are just a few street names on the map to become covered with the Full Fibre network as of [last week],” said the ISP.

Sadly, Zzoomm didn’t say how many premises have been passed so far in the city or when the local rollout would complete. But it all forms part of their wider ambition to reach 1 million UK premises in 85 towns by the end of 2025, which is currently being supported by an equity investment of £100m from Oaktree Capital Management (here) and a £100m debt facility from an international banking consortium (here).

Residential customers on the new network typically pay from £29 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package and that goes up to £99 if you want their top 2Gbps tier, which also happens to be one of the fastest home broadband packages available in the UK. Installation is free, and you get two Hubs to boost WiFi.

Louise Healey, Hereford’s Regional Director for Zzoomm, said:

“Providing the first customers in Hereford with amazing Zzoomm Full Fibre broadband has been a labour of love for the past 12 months. We have hired, trained, and developed local teams to build this network and the hard work is now paying off.”

At present a number of rival gigabit-capable broadband networks have a presence in and around the edges Hereford, including Openreach (BT), Gigaclear and Glide, but this is at a fairly small scale and thus Zzoomm may be well positioned to take a first mover advantage in the local market. A quick look at the published rollout plans suggest that Zzoomm will be doing most of the work over the next few months, although Openreach have a bit of build going on too.