Digital Infrastructure List Next 9 UK Areas for FTTP Broadband Build
Network builder Digital Infrastructure (DI), which last year began deploying a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 1 million premises in 80 UK towns and cities by 2027 (here and here), has today named the next 9 locations to benefit from their rollout.
The provider’s first deployment began for 38,000 homes in the Cheshire town of Crewe (Zzoomm and VX Fiber are building in the same area), which is being supported by Aberla Utilities as part of a 5-year contract. The first homes in Brentwood have since joined those, with Worcester, Clacton on Sea, Crewe and Nantwich also imminent.
The good news is that DI has today added another 9 locations to the next phase of their rollout plan, which includes some parts of Rotherham and Lancaster. All of this is being supported by an investment of £100m from Basalt Infrastructure Partners.
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However, the operator doesn’t specify precisely how many premises will benefit in each location or when each build will complete, but we expect most of them will complete long before the end of 2027.
DI’s Next 9 UK Fibre Build Locations
Now Oundle
Maltby
Dinnington
Hyde
Hattersley
Heysham
Skelmersdale
Rotherham (parts of)
Lancaster (parts of)
As usual with urban-focused alternative networks, some of the aforementioned locations are also being targetted by gigabit-capable broadband builds from rival operators, as well as by the larger and more established players (e.g. Openreach, CityFibre and Virgin Media). Suffice to say, competition is expected to be aggressive.
DI is also making good use of Openreach’s existing cable ducts in these areas to run their own fibre (Physical Infrastructure Access), which is now a fairly common practice.
Charlie Ruddy, DI’s CEO, said:
“We embarked on our journey to future-proof the UK’s connectivity in January 2021, and things are really gathering momentum. We’re providing local communities with a fit-for-the-future infrastructure that delivers the guaranteed speeds people need now and for years to come. This is a brand-new network that will leave a positive legacy in society.
We’re also not afraid to stand up and talk about why things need to change in this market – in terms of speed, customer service and reliability, this is broadband as it should be.”
The operator expects that up to 500 civil engineering and white-collar jobs will be created to support the growth of both organisations and the business supply chain, by the end of 2022. But they will still need to raise significantly more investment in order to hit that 1 million premises goal, which will no doubt follow if they can show good delivery and take-up over time.
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Customers of the Be Fibre service can expect to pay from £29 per month on a 24-month term for an unlimited 150Mbps package with free installation, which rises to just £51 for those who want their top 1Gbps tier.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I keep on seeing overbuilds shortly followed by super cheap pricing.
You’d think we’d be at the stage where they’d be targeting areas without FTTP planned instead of competing for a portion of those who takeup FTTP.
At what point does the overbuild and reduced pricing yield lower results than deploying where there is no competition but slightly higher costs ?
That is indeed the big question, at what point. But for these AltNets it’s difficult, since it can take 1-2 years to put together a rollout plan, to attract the necessary interest from investors and then to begin the build.
Often these plans will have been created at a time when there were no known altnets targeting the same areas, but quite a few providers are starting to trip over each other because many of them were putting together their plans at roughly the same time. You end up with quite a tedious challenge.
The solution to this challenge will be different for each area and each operator. Some will try to build faster than their rivals or you could try undercutting them on price, while others (those that are more established) may use consolidation as a tool. Alternatively, you could pull out of some areas, but that’s a last resort and is less likely to occur after an area has been announced.
The only thing you can’t afford to do is cross your fingers and hope that everything works out.
If they target areas without FTTP it immediately becomes commercially viable for Openreach to build there as they don’t want to lose custom.
This has happened several times. Given this it makes more sense for altnets to focus on areas with lower build costs close to their existing build.
You’d hope it’s got to factor in somewhere, or else how will we fill in all the gaps?
Where I live there are villages to the N/S/E/W. Village to the West has had VM long time, Openreach are going to build FTTP there after VM, Cityfibre also going to build the year after that. Nothing planned for the other 4 villages (prob 500m between each) other than a newbuild estate in one village which won’t be expanded upon and not rural enough for gigabit vouchers :/
@CarlT: “If they target areas without FTTP it immediately becomes commercially viable for Openreach to build there as they don’t want to lose custom.”
Isn’t the same true for an altnet? I know of quite a few densely built-up towns with 5000 to 20000 residents without any FTTP.
No. They don’t have existing copper assets to lose market share to others on. Can’t lose market share if you’ve no market share to lose in an area.
OK, I understand, makes sense.
These guys are jokers – i live in Brentwood and registered interest ages ago. They are not taking orders anywhere near me (Hutton).
Most of the alt nets are good at making announcement about broad areas they intend to deploy in but useless at giving progress updates and when they declare they have gone live it is totally non specific . They have probably only deployed in one or two streets
Can’t say I’ve had that experience with Netomnia / YouFibre. They’ve kept in touch with all of us to let us know they are on their way by snail mail to everyone and email to those that registered interest.
I would imagine they aren’t the only one. CityFibre being wholesale only might be a slightly different story.
Yet another company overbuilding, why not come to the east midlands and build, openreach seemingly doesn’t know my home town of Melton mowbray even exists. We are a county town that is always expanding and because of this we have dropouts, speed issues all the time and the local authority keeps allowing developments to be built without the backbone infrastructure to support the expansion of the town.i can’t even livestream content because of speed and stability issue and as such my income is significantly less than it should be and I am certainly not the only one in this position.
Yet another company overbuilding, why not come to the east midlands and build, openreach seemingly doesn’t know my home town of Melton mowbray even exists. We are a county town that is always expanding and because of this we have dropouts, speed issues all the time and the local authority keeps allowing developments to be built without the backbone infrastructure to support the expansion of the town.i can’t even livestream content because of speed and stability issue and as such my income is significantly less than it should be and I am certainly not the only one in this position.