Country Connect Grow Full Fibre Cover in Wales to 2750 Premises

Alternative network ISP Country Connect, which last year began building a new gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in South Wales (here), has just celebrated having covered 2,750 homes and businesses in their initial deployment area. But that number could double by the end of this year.

The latest figure might not seem like much when compared with some of the biggest AltNet builds, but this is still good for a provider of Country Connect’s comparatively diminutive size. In total, their engineers, which first started work in the village of Ponthir and town of Caerleon last year, have since laid 30 kilometres (over 18 miles) of new fibre in just the past 10 months.

However, the provider is admittedly a bit behind their original target, which means that they now expect to have a total of 5,000 premises Ready for Service (RFS) by 1st September 2022. A good chunk of this new fibre is also being run via Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles using PIA (Physical Infrastructure Access).

Customers of the service tend to pay from £25 per month for a 100Mbps (symmetric) package, and that rises to £59.99 for their top 900Mbps package (500Mbps upload). The ISP also offers a “social tariff” for those on benefits, which gives you symmetric speeds of 50Mbps for just £15 per month, as well as an included router and free installation on a 12-month term.