New Record as YouFibre Put Tewkesbury Full Fibre Live in 22 Days
Broadband ISP YouFibre has revealed that their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in the Gloucestershire town of Tewkesbury, which is being built by network partner Netomnia, has set a new record for the operator by going live just 22 days after the rollout was first formally announced.
Just to recap. Netomnia, which is being supported by £418 million of funding and already covers over 130,000 UK premises across various towns (estimated build rate of 15,000 premises per month), currently aims to reach 1 million UK homes and businesses by the end of 2023. Some 11,000 of these, at a cost of £3.3m, will come from Tewkesbury.
The operator and its ISP are already among the fastest UK full fibre builders to turn deployment into Ready For Service (RFS) areas, which is no doubt partly down to their ability to run fibre via Openreach’s existing ducts and poles – a common feature among AltNets today.
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On the other hand, there’s no solid standard for gauging ‘timescale-to-live’, particularly as different operators will announce new locations at different stages of readiness (e.g. those that announce an area before they’ve conducted engineering surveys vs those that announce once street works have already begun). Some of the areas that Netomnia announce have often also been listed on their website for a lot longer.
The other thing to remember is that going live is not the same as achieving 100% coverage of the 11,000 promised premises. Initially, it could be anything from a handful to a few hundred properties that are live, while reaching the rest will take a lot longer. By comparison, other operators may wait to reach a larger number of premises before flicking the on-switch.
Ryan Battle, Managing Director of YouFibre, said:
“We are absolutely delighted to be bringing YouFibre to Tewkesbury, benefitting residents and businesses as well as our own employees at YouFibre HQ! Being local to the area, we are aware of how much an ultrafast and ultra-affordable broadband provider will benefit the town and support the local community.”
The service itself offers unlimited usage, symmetrical speeds, a Wi-Fi router, free installation and 24/7 UK based support. Customers pay from just £22 per month on an 18-month term for their unlimited 50Mbps package, which rises to £45 if you want their top 900Mbps plan. Better yet, they’re currently offering 3 to 6 months of free service to new subscribers – varying by package choice.
Rivals at Openreach and Gigaclear are also deploying or planning to deploy FTTP across the same town.
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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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So, commit to build in an town, deliver exchange space/back haul etc, complete design.
Once all the above is done make announce and bring a customer live quickly.
Claim it’s only taken 21 days!
Meanwhile everyone else announces at the point they commit to building an area.
“Meanwhile everyone else announces at the point they commit to building an area.”
Except they don’t. I’ve seen locations being announced, at lots of different stages in the overall development cycle, by different operators, including operators that announce before they’ve secured enough funding or interest.
But, on Netomnia’s own approach, Tewkesbury is still an exceptionally rapid deployment to live.
On the map in their website they’ve had it as in progress for longer, I’ve seen no mention or any claim about the speed it took from announcement
It’s in the press release we got: “YouFibre has announced it’s first live customer in Tewkesbury today, just 22 days since Netomnia announced rollout in the area.”
@Mark
It’s not possible to build in 22 days including exchange space etc.
What’s next? Announce a week before it goes live and claim a 7 day record?!
I’ve much more respect for those who announces their plans pre build.
Aware, as per comments in the article above, about locations already being listed on Netomnia’s website for a period before they’re formally announced.
Proof Openreach are slow. Cityfibre have pretty much completed Chichester. That took a few months. It can be done.
You have to be kidding?
@Mark,
Final section of the article is perhaps incorrect?
“Rivals at Openreach and Openreach are also deploying or planning to deploy FTTP across the same town.”
Openreach & Openreach…?
Netomnia doing bits, honestly they’ll be in the top 5 AltNets soon
As John mentioned, Tewkesbury has been on Netomnia’s rollout plan for atleast 6 months as in progress
The 22 days is from Netomnias press release on ISPreview and today (14 Jul). 22 days isnt when build commenced to RFS.
Easy to do when you are putting up equipment on Decayed poles and taking off the pole labels to hide the fact.
Cool i used to live there. Back in 2007 i had to use plusnet and it sucked badly. Nice to see town is getting upgraded with better connection. After a decade hahha.
Well done to Netomnia and youfibre. Faultless, fast and efficient instalation and service at my property