Zzoomm Freeze FTTP Broadband Prices as Berkshire Towns Go Live
The Berkshire (England) towns of Sandhurst and Crowthorne have just become the latest to start going live on Zzoomm’s new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network, which should eventually reach over 10,500 premises in the two locations. The UK ISP has also frozen their prices.
The operator, which is being fuelled by an investment of £100m from Oaktree Capital Management (here) and a £100m debt facility from an international banking consortium (here), started the rollout in Sandhurst and Crowthorne during August 2021 (here). The operator is now live in a number of locations across both areas (e.g. Alcot Close and Newmarket Road), but it’s not entirely clear how long it will take them to complete the build.
In terms of the local gigabit-capable competition, Crowthorne is already partly covered by Virgin Media’s network, and you can also find some patches of FTTP from OFNL and Openreach (the latter is expected to grow). As for Sandhurst, you’ll find some patches from Openreach and Virgin Media, but not to a significant level, yet.
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 Chief Executive, said:
“The construction of our brilliant fast network in Sandhurst and Crowthorne is a watershed moment for homes and businesses. The old copper network in the area used by their current providers holds them back.
For the first time, homes and businesses in the area will have a choice of network. And what a choice: choose our a brand new full fibre infrastructure that that is totally fit for your future and will blow you away.”
In a separate development, Zzoomm has launched a “price freeze promotion for the rest of this month“, which means that existing customers will not incur any price rises for the rest of 2022, and any new customers who join by the 31st March will also reap the benefits of no price rises in 2022.
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 and Linkedin.
« Cornwall Focused ISP Wildanet Keeps Broadband Prices Frozen
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (5525)
- BT (3518)
- Politics (2541)
- Openreach (2298)
- Business (2264)
- Building Digital UK (2246)
- FTTC (2044)
- Mobile Broadband (1975)
- Statistics (1789)
- 4G (1666)
- Virgin Media (1621)
- Ofcom Regulation (1463)
- Fibre Optic (1395)
- Wireless Internet (1390)
- FTTH (1382)
Bit premature of Zzoomm to announce they’ve “gone live” in Sandhurst as multiple postcode checks (20) in different roads just return “coming later this year”. Quite a few of the green cabs haven’t even had the internals installed and they are just held closed with electrical tape wrapped around them.
It’s not uncommon for smaller altnets to go live gradually on a street by street basis.
Bit premature to claim Alcot Close as myself and the other house that has had it installed are not live due to “network problems”, supposedly with Virgin Media backhaul at Slough or Canary Wharf, but they have not explained how people in other roads are not affected.
They say the same thing here in Hereford, and they only cover a tiny part of the city at the moment. There are some people that have been connected, but I don’t think it is many, and some of them are having problems.
A few complaints about how they have gone about things installing the network.
Not being funny, they have not completed the network here, and yet they were already looking at increasing the price, they must have been to come out about freezing prices. Be next year before I am able to get it, even if it does come here in the summer, due to me being in contract with plusnet, but to be honest, I really don’t want to pay more than £30 for a connection, no matter how much faster it is than what I have got, which is around 35Mbs. If plusnet gives me a good offer again next year, I will stay, paying £22 a month. Also, i am not sure if I want the hassle of having fibre installed.
@Mark I’m guessing they changed the press release as it now says “ Zzoomm Full Fibre broadband is now connected to the first homes in Crowthorne with Sandhurst and surrounding areas set to receive Full Fibre imminently.”
https://zzoomm.com/zzoomm-full-fibre-sandhurst-crowthorne/
Sandhurst became available to order today, install date of 13th April. £29pm with Free upgrade to 450mb for 6 months.
Install happened as expected and now on 900Mbps symmetrical, always hitting 950Mbps No IPv6 which is a bit disappointing but speed is excellent.
They are very busy with bookings it appears as no appointments until August.
Unfortunately the worst area for connectivity (Little Sandhurst) which has no FTTP and is fed by aluminium BT overhead cables has been entirely left off of Zzoomm’s build plan. Trooli are deploying to a couple of place in Little Sandhurst but leaving the worst served areas out. There will be approximately 60 houses left behind in the digital dark ages. We will likely need to setup a WISP. Especially frustrating when zzoomm promised connectivity for here for 6 months continuously and then gave up when they realised it was hard.
Give Trooli their due. Their quality and safety is extremely poor but their coverage on their areas is very widespread, including in Little Sandhurst where they are pretty much everywhere according to TB maps.
For what is being offered in Hereford, ZZoomm’s already very high prices are not very enticing. £59 for a 900mbps service, and then another £10 per MONTH, seems ridiculous.
OpenReach is now coming to the local area, and Zzoomm needs to be more competitive, and frankly improve their quality and reliability of installation if they are to achieve success.
As ad47uk said, i have very internet high usage and staying on a FTTC service at £23 for a 65mbit service with vodafone is more attractive that ZZoomms current offerings.
….. another £10 per MONTH for a static IP …..
So when is out of reach coming to Hereford? They have done a couple of streets a few years ago, and I think they have done the city centre, but at the moment I have heard nothing about Out of reach doing fibre to the rest of Hereford.
I do agree with you the price of a static IP is a bit high, but at least Zzoomm have included the same uploads speeds as the download for free now and have increased the speed of the lowest package.
But yeah I get around 35Mb/s, which is fine for what I need it for, if things change in the futre then I have the option of going for Zzoomm when they eventually get up here, but I think they will be here before out of reach. My one problem with zzoomm is that they do make a mess.