Grain Build 1Gbps FTTP Broadband to Hartlepool in Durham UK

UK ISP Grain has today announced that homes and businesses in the large port town of Hartlepool in County Durham (North East England) will be the next to benefit from their deployment of a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network.

At present Grain, which was recently boosted by a £75m equity investment from Equitix (here), aims to cover 300,000 UK premises. As part of that they’re already expanding their network across parts of Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness and Blackburn, among others.

The latest town to join this list is Hartlepool. Some of the first streets being connected in phase one of this build will include Baden Street, Lister Street, Elwick Road, Colwyn Road and Holt Street, with plans to expand to thousands more homes in the coming months.

Once live, new customers can expect to pay from just £25 per month for a symmetric speed 50Mbps package, which goes up to £55 for their top 900Mbps plan. All of these packages come with an 18-month minimum contract term (it was previously only 12-months), free installation and a router.

Tracy Karam, Head of Customer Experience for Grain, said:

“The response from residents and businesses to what we are offering has been very positive, with many signing up to our service before work on their street has even been started.

Our service has become even more popular in recent months, as customers rely more and more on a fast, reliable and secure network for working, learning, gaming, and entertainment. We are pleased to be rolling out our offer prices to the residents of Hartlepool, allowing them to access true full-fibre at unbeatable prices.”

However, one risk for Grain concerns how Hartlepool is a town that is already being targeted by various FTTP builds from rivals, and not to mention Virgin Media’s existing gigabit-capable presence across much of the area. The other ISPs with FTTP in the town, either planned or already partly present, are Openreach (BT) and CityFibre. Both Hyperoptic and OFNL also have some very limited deployments in the town.

On the other hand, right now most of Grain’s local competitors have only limited coverage, which offers a small window of opportunity to build before they do.