Zzoomm’s FTTP Broadband Goes Live in Crewe and Nantwich UK

UK ISP Zzoomm has announced that their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network has begun to go live in parts of the large railway town and civil parish of Crewe and Nantwich (Cheshire, England), with premises in the village of Shavington being the first to benefit. But competition is fierce.

The provider, which holds a wider ambition to reach 1 million UK premises in 85 towns by the end of 2025, first announced the local deployment during May 2021 (here). Back then the plan was to cover 52,000 premises across the Crewe and Nantwich area, although it’s unclear how long it will take them to complete the build.

From Main Road to Ashcroft Avenue, these are just a few of the first customers on the map to become covered with the new “full fibre” network as of this week. As the expansion of the network build in Crewe and Nantwich continues, this will obviously increase.

Customers on the new network can expect to pay from £29 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package and that goes up to £99 if you want their top 2Gbps tier (or £59 for 900Mbps+), which also happens to be one of the fastest UK home broadband packages available. Installation is free, and you get two Hubs to boost WiFi.

Matthew Hare, Zzoomm’s CEO, said:

“For the first time, homes and local businesses in the area will have a choice of network. And what a choice: a brand new infrastructure that that is fit for the future and able to meet existing consumer demands.”

Back when Zzoomm first announced this build we remarked that, outside of a small FTTP footprint from Openreach and the coverage of some businesses by ITS Technology, there didn’t appear to be an awful lot of gigabit-capable competitors for the provider to worry about. How times change.

Since then VX Fiber (inc. subsidiary LilaConnect) have begun a massive build of their own FTTP network across the same area (here), which is currently much larger and more active than Zzoomm’s deployment – they’re positively peppering the main town with planned build activity.

On top of that another altnet called Digital Infrastructure Ltd has also begun to build in the same area (here), albeit at a much smaller scale than VXF/Lila and Zzoomm. In addition, we’re also seeing more build activity from Openreach, albeit still fairly low-key at this stage.

Suffice to say that, in a very short space of time, the area has suddenly become aggressively competitive. Zzoomm might not be building to the same pace as VXF/Lila are right now, but they did start work a little earlier and have managed to score another point by beginning to go live before their rivals. But we have our doubts about the area’s ability to support so many new entrants.