Full fibre ISP Lit Fibre, which is currently deploying a 10Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to reach 500,000 UK homes by 2026, has named the neighbouring seaside towns of Clacton-on-Sea and Frinton-on-Sea in Essex (England) as the next ones to benefit from their rollout.
The provider has already announced a number of towns for their new network deployment, which until today reflected an initial build plan for over 100,000 homes. This included Corsham and Chippenham in Wiltshire, as well as Cirencester (Gloucestershire), Bishop’s Stortford (Hertfordshire), Sudbury (Suffolk) and Evesham (Worcestershire).
As for the latest towns to be added to this list. Lit Fibre’s network in Clacton-on-Sea, which is home to a population of around 57,000, is said to be at an “advanced stage” and will be available for customers to place orders for service in January 2022. Additionally, work will begin in January 2022 to extend this coverage to the nearby town of Frinton-on-Sea, which is home to a much smaller population of around 5,000.
Homes on Lit’s network typically pay from £25 per month on a 12-month term (£30 thereafter) for their unlimited 100Mbps package (includes a free install, symmetric speeds and a Wi-Fi 6 router), which rises to £55 (£65 thereafter) for 900Mbps (average).
Tom Williams, CEO of Lit Fibre, said:
“We continue to expand our network build teams, and it’s great to announce we’re now building in 2 more towns so soon after our first homes went live in Chippenham, Cirencester and Bishop’s Stortford. More and more customers are getting access to Lit Fibre on a weekly basis, improving their homes’ speeds and reliability just in time for the festive period.”
As has become increasingly common with gigabit-capable broadband builds over the past year, Lit Fibre won’t have this area all to themselves. Both towns also appear on Openreach’s FTTP rollout plan (they’ve already reached some premises, albeit quite sporadically) and rival ISP Lightspeed Broadband have a similar ambition for the area.
However, Clacton is a particularly big town and so stands a reasonable chance of being able to support such aggressive competition, although it’s much harder to say the same about a small community like Frinton.
It will be interesting to see any price battles between the 2 isp’s, one is slightly cheaper for the 1gb but one has a 12 month contract, but nothing available as yet.
Seen plenty of activity by Green boxes recently with a lot of planned works of roadworks sites by green boxes.
Once all up and running are we ( as an end user) stuck with just these 2 isp’s or will others become available?
There will be three networks when Openreach eventually deploy there.
Openreach will offer wholesale. Two altnets are probably ok but they don’t have to offer wholesale when it’s private investment. I expect one will eventually get sold to Virgin Media and the other to Cityfibre who are likely to offer wholesale access.
Clacton was originally part of a cable TV franchise area, but it never got built before the cable bubble burst and coverage obligations were removed from franchises to save the industry. At least it looks like the FTTP gold rush will have a happier ending in Clacton if network build is already underway.
no virgin media anywhere within 16 miles of clacton
interesting choice of location as well
CVlacton is somewhast of a strange choice. A sizable town but a high ederly population and lot of people on benefits so how high the the take up will be who knows
One.network shows that Digital Infrastructure Ltd are also doing work in Clacton. Surely Clacton can’t support three altnets?
Tweeted lit fibre earlier today to enquire about the router supplied, its a gigaspire u4, mesh capable but they will be around £5-10 per unit per month lol
Think I’d rather buy my own equipment, calix don’t sell retail only to isp’s. Bit of a let down if that’s how it is once it’s up and running and ready to order. I’m with plusnet at the minute, contract ends in May 22, so not rushing in to anything.
Recently moved to Frinton and happy to hear that this is on the cards.
Saw Lit Fibre engineers opposite us last week feeding the cable through the existing telecom manhole covers.
Curious how long it will take for it to all go LIVE here in Frinton.
There are now 3 Altnets coming to Clacton. Lightspeed Broadband, Lit Fibre and BeFibre.
If you want 1gb Lightspeed is the cheapest by far. But if you want a lower speed you have to go with one of the others. Though lightspeed’s 1gb is cheaper than 500gb on the others (not Inc sale prices).