The town of Accrington in Lancashire (England), which is home to a population of over 35,000, has become the latest location to be added to ISP Brsk‘s ongoing UK rollout of a new gigabit-capable and “open access” Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network.
The operator began their rollout a few months ago in the village of Cottingley, which has since been followed by the towns of Keighley and Bingley (50,000 premises for those two), as well as Clayton, Allerton & Sandy Lane, Heaton & Daisy Hill. More recently they’ve also added Burnley and Padiham (another 50,000 premises), which were just followed by Queensbury and Thornton.
The latest town to join this list is Accrington (credits to Mithras for spotting this). Engineers have already begun work around the Milnshaw area, with Enfield and Church set to follow. Assuming all goes to plan, then each of those should be ready for service by around March 2022.
Local schools in these areas will often benefit from being offered free connectivity, while customers can expect a “no contract” (1-month term) service with prices from £25 per month for an unlimited 100Mbps symmetric speed package with a free installation and included router, which rises to £45 for their top 900Mbps package. Customers who sign up early will be able to try 1Gbps for free, for the first 6-months of service, with no obligation or commitment.
The challenge in Accrington is that Virgin Media’s gigabit-capable network already covers the majority of premises (albeit with some big gaps around the central area) and another alternative network provider, Grain, added the town to their own FTTP rollout back in August 2021 (here).
Where is the pink on that map?
Meanwhile, 5 miles away in Haslingden, there are no FTTP providers, no Virgin Media, no 5G.
How do they decide where to expand?
Wouldn’t complain too much as Haslingden is part of Openreach’s FTTP rollout according to the fibre first map. Accrington and the likes of Burnley are neglected by Openreach’s FTTP rollout plans. Atleast we have Grain and BRSK to fill these gaps.