ISP Adds 21 Cambridgeshire UK Villages to FTTP Broadband Build

Rural focused UK ISP County Broadband (CB) has today added 21 villages in Cambridgeshire (England) to their multi-million-pound rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. All of the new villages are located within the St Neots and Huntingdon areas.

The provider, which tends to focus on the East of England area and is being supported by £46 million from Aviva Investors, is already deploying full fibre across several rural parts of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk (totalling around 200 villages).

The build itself is demand-led, which means that each community needs to confirm their interest before CB can begin their deployments. In terms of South Cambridgeshire, the ISP is already working with 56 villages and deployments have already gone live in 14 of those.

As for today’s new additions, they are said to reflect a total coverage of over 6,000 premises in the county.

The 21 New Villages in Cambridgeshire:

Boxworth, Buckden, Diddington, Elsworth, Eltisley, Grafham, Graveley, Great Paxton, Great Staughton, Hail Weston, Hilton, Knapwell, Lolworth, Midloe, Offord Cluny, Offord D’Arcy, Papworth St Agnes, Perry, Southoe, Toseland, Yelling

Sadly, CB has not provided any updates on their future and achieved coverage targets for quite some time, thus it’s difficult to know whether they’re meeting their objectives on time.

James Salmon, CB’s Director of Sale and New Territories, said:

“We are excited to announce our rollout plans to future-proof another 21 villages in Cambridgeshire with world-class full-fibre broadband infrastructure that will provide gigabit-speeds and bullet-proof reliability.

As an East of England company, we are committed to helping Cambridgeshire become a flagbearer for future-ready digital connectivity. Crucially, we have secured millions of pounds of private funding to spearhead our ambitions, meaning we can start planning today to meet our growing future needs.

Demand for home and business internet connectivity has reached a record high, partly due to the pandemic. More and more data-hungry devices require ever faster, more reliable broadband. Combined with our new online modern lifestyles, the reality is that our current part-fibre, part-copper networks simply cannot cope any longer or provide the service we all expect and require.

It is also important to emphasise that building full-fibre infrastructure in rural locations at this scale is a complex task. Each project requires significant planning, resources and time. It involves the coordination of highways, landowners, civils works and advanced fibre optic engineering. That’s why the sooner we start, the sooner our future-ready full-fibre service will become available.”

Prices for their service may vary between areas, but in most cases new customers will typically pay from £28 per month (excluding discounts) for an unlimited symmetric speed 50Mbps service with a bundled wireless router and free installation, then £48 for 300Mbps, £55 for 600Mbps and £80 for 900Mbps.