ISP Fibrus List Next UK Towns for 2022 FTTP Broadband Rollout

Alternative network ISP Fibrus, which is busy deploying a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across Northern Ireland and Northern England, has today revealed the next batch of “commercially funded” towns and villages to benefit from the rollout of their new “hyperfast full fibre” network in 2022.

Fibrus’ full fibre infrastructure has so far managed to cover 104,381 premises (up from 58,000 premises in August 2021), which includes delivery under both their state aid supported deployments via Project Stratum and their separate commercial builds across both N.Ireland and the Northern England.

The operator currently expects to cover an overall total of 250,000 UK premises by the end of the year. However, we should be clear that today’s announcement is only focused on their commercial deployments, and thus does not reflect their state aid linked build plans (i.e. the 85,000 premises under Stratum).

In Northern Ireland, the list of major towns where Fibrus has just begun planning and building includes Omagh, Ballymoney, Cookstown, Downpatrick, Dromore, Coleraine and Banbridge, whilst in Cumbria (England) they plan to deliver to the towns of Penrith and Kendal this year.

The latest towns above reflect an additional 145,000 premises, which will be connected once works are completed in these areas. We should point out that, when just looking at England alone, their current goal is to cover 300,000 premises in “118 regional towns” across parts of Cumbria, Northumberland and North Yorkshire by the end of 2024 (here).

Fibrus’ Chief Executive, Dominic Kearns, said:

“We’re delighted to be announcing our plans for this year to allow customers to know when they can expect to see us. Homes and businesses in these towns have been deprived of proper broadband and competition for too long, so we are looking forward to adding more and more of these towns and villages to our transformative new network.

We’re just about to complete the build to one of our bigger towns in Northern Ireland, Omagh, and in April we will see the first homes go live in the town of Penrith in Cumbria. Our delivery capacity continues to grow, along with our key sub-contractors, and we look forward to driving the output even further in 2023.

Fibrus is committed to investing where the bigger phone companies have had no competition for years. Finally consumers in these towns will have an option to buy proper full fibre broadband from a broadband company.”

Customers of the provider typically pay from £39.99 per month (currently discounted to £19.99 – but only in their commercial areas) for an unlimited 150Mbps package with a router and free installation, which rises to £59.99 per month for their top 1000Mbps tier on a 12-month contract term.