Town of South Shields Next to Get Grain’s Gigabit Broadband

The town of South Shields, which sits at the mouth of the River Tyne just outside of Newcastle in North East England, has today been named as the next location to benefit from UK ISP Grain‘s rollout of a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network.

At present Grain, which was recently supported by a £75 million equity investment from Equitix and aims to cover 300,000 premises by the end of 2026 (here), has already named full fibre rollout plans for parts of Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Scarborough, Carlisle, Cleethorpes, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Newport, Sunderland and Blackburn, among others.

In terms of South Shields, the first phase of Grain’s build will focus on areas such as Lawe Road and Roman Road, and will include Baring Street, St Aidan’s Road and Trajan Avenue, with plans to expand to thousands more homes in the coming months. But much like past announcements, it remains unclear precisely how many local premises will actually be reached and by when.

However, and much as we’ve seen in some of the provider’s other rollout targets, South Shields is already home to some gigabit-capable rivals. For example, Virgin Media’s network already covers the area and Openreach also has a small patch of FTTP coverage. But there does appear to be some opportunity for Grain to grow.

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, unlimited usage, free installation and a router. The provider also pledges “no in-contract price rises.” The only thing we’d wish is for Grain to announce their deployment plans in batches, rather than day-by-day piecemeal updates.