Quickline Build 900Mb Broadband to Lissington in Lincolnshire UK

East Yorkshire-based UK ISP Quickline has just connected homes and businesses in the Lincolnshire village of Lissington to their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which forms part of their £6.1m state aid supported Building Digital UK (BDUK) contract with the Lincolnshire County Council (LCC).

Originally, the provider’s primary focus was on deploying superfast Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband networks to cover poorly served areas, but over the past couple of years they’ve begun to deploy “full fibre” infrastructure too and have secured several BDUK contracts. More recently, the ISP has also been gobbled up by Northleaf Capital Partners ahead of their long-term ambition to cover 500,000 UK premises (here).

One of the aforementioned BDUK contracts was for Phase 3 of the LCC’s broadband project, which was signed in 2020 (here) and aims to reach around 8,000 premises (homes and businesses) in rural parts of Lincolnshire with “superfast” (30Mbps+) and “ultrafast” (100Mbps+) broadband.

The first FTTP deployments under this contract only recently got underway, and the village of Lissington is one of the first to benefit from that.

Lee Allison, Quickline’s COO, said:

“It is so important for rural areas to get the same fast, reliable and secure internet as everyone else. Our focus at Quickline is to even up that digital divide. The last two years have shown us just how essential it is to have broadband you can depend on.

We have a unique approach to rolling out broadband which enables us to reach remote rural communities where others simply can’t or won’t. We build a hybrid network, so a combination of fibre and fixed wireless access, to connect these areas. For Lissington, we were able to go full fibre – and we are really proud to say that Lissington is our very first full fibre village in Lincolnshire – and with speeds of to 900mbps, they may well be the envy of people living and working in cities up and down the UK.”

Ian Knowles, CEO of West Lindsey District Council, said:

“Rural communities like ours have been left trailing behind our counterparts in urban areas for far too long, so it’s fantastic that our residents and businesses will finally have access to ultrafast internet speeds as a result of Quickline’s innovative technology. We’ve seen without a shadow of a doubt during the pandemic how important reliable connectivity is. It’s an absolute necessity in this day and age and having full fibre in Lissington supports West Lindsey’s commitment to achieving a better connected region.”

Customers looking to hop on to this new network can expect to pay from £35 inc. VAT per month (£25 for the first 6 months) and £30 setup for an unlimited 150Mbps (15Mbps upload) service on a 24-month contract, which rises to £65 per month (£55 for the first 6 months) for their top 900Mbps (90Mbps upload) package. You also get an included router.

Oddly, the 900Mbps tier on their website says its price “excludes VAT“, despite being aimed at homes, but we think this might be an error as it lists the same £30 setup fee just above. The same plan also makes another awkward typo where it references an “Up to 9000Mbps download speed“.

Sadly, neither the LCC nor Quickline have ever published much in the way of a clear rollout plan for this contract, and the council’s old Onlincolnshire project site seems to have been retired. Instead, there’s only a coverage checker, which is useful but doesn’t provide an effective overview of what the overall contract will actually deliver and when. We did try searching through past council documents, but they’re all fairly vague.

On top of that it seems like every press release for this contract mentions a different level of funding. The original announcement noted that £3.1m would come from the Lincolnshire Local Authority and £1.5m from the European Regional Development Fund (£4.6m), while a further subsidy of £1.5m might become available “subject to certain conditions” and Quickline was also committing £2m. But other releases on the council’s website put the figure at £3.48m (example) and today’s news references £6.1m.