Lit Fibre UK Name 5 New Towns for Full Fibre Broadband Build
Broadband ISP and UK network builder Lit Fibre, which is working to deploy a new gigabit-speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 500,000 homes by 2026, has today added 5 new towns across parts of the West Midlands, Essex and Hertfordshire in England to their ongoing rollout plan.
The provider, which started building last year and is being backed by an unspecified equity investment from Newlight Partners LP, is currently deploying a new full fibre network to cover various towns in several of England’s counties (e.g. Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Worcestershire, Essex, Suffolk and the West Midlands).
However, as a result of today’s announcement, the total number of homes being targeted by the operator – in towns already under deployment – has increased by an extra 150,000 premises to total 350,000. More locations will be announced in the future to help them hit the 500k target.
As a result of all this, a total of 17 towns are now in their published build plan, with 5 new additions being added today (see below). The operator appears to be building at a rate of above 10,000 homes passed per month.
Lit Fibre’s Latest 5 Rollout Towns (Sept 2022)
St Albans
Chelmsford
Welwyn Garden City
Stratford-Upon-Avon
Potters Bar
As per usual, Lit Fibre won’t be the only gigabit-capable broadband network in some of these locations (Openreach in St Albans and Chelmsford etc.), with the odd one also seeing activity from multiple networks.
Tom Williams, CEO of Lit Fibre, said:
“There is a clear need for speed within these towns and we are working to supercharge the communities with our full-fibre network. Residents want the freedom to move away from the incumbents offering substandard services at unaffordable prices so by switching to Lit Fibre, residents can finally experience the freedom to do more online thanks to our full-fibre infrastructure.
Technology requirements have vastly changed within the last decade, with multiple devices being used at any one time and a growing number of household appliances functioning through Wi-Fi. We want to help meet these demands with the latest technologies and a best-in-class customer service experience, rated 5 stars on Trustpilot.”
Residential customers on their full fibre network currently pay from £28 per month a 12-month term (£30 thereafter) for their unlimited 100Mbps package (includes a free install, symmetric speeds and a Wi-Fi 6 router), which rises to £61 (£65 thereafter) for 900Mbps (average).
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.
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Lit sound like they’re moving nicely. Great Trustpilot reviews too
Dont think they did their market research with some
of these places
Interesting view…what do you mean?
@JJ: Some places where LitFibre intends to install fibre are, or will be, covered by other fibre providers, too, such as in Chelmsford or Clacton-on-Sea. On the other hand, there are quite a few densely populated small towns in East Anglia with no fibre at all.
So yes, it’s doubtful whether they did proper market research.
Also, merely announcing to deploy fibre in a certain town doesn’t mean much these days. It’s not uncommon for up to 2 years to pass between an announcement and the actual final deployment. Quite often altnets don’t have proper rollout plans.
Or maybe they do know what they are doing and have chosen locations that will make them an attractive takeover target for Cityfibre in the future.
Never seems to be any FTTP builds going on in Bedfordshire, always seems to be everyone else in the news getting full fibre 🙁
Surely Bedfordshire hgasnt become the UK version of the Bermuda Triangle now has it?
Leicestershire seems more neglected than anywhere else at the moment, outside of Leicester itself where there’s a bit of CityFibre.
Cityfibre are building in Luton, Dunstable and surrounding area.
I’m in Bedford and some people have openreach FTTP others don’t. But netomnia will also be available to order in a few more months. It’s a big county though and there are a lot of small towns with nothing either.
Regards City Fibre and this applies to all FTTP providers , there’s no announcements or news about FTTP rollout for Beds unlike other counties where FTTP providers are shouting as loud as they can announcing what places they’re working next etc.
I’ve yet to see full fibre announcements from BT, City Fibre etc as all I see is news from other areas 🙁
@GNewton who else is in Chelmsford?
See https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=2&election=1#12/51.6834/0.5253/allfttp/
@GNewton ahh yess – the customer focussed Virgin and Openreach
F Ahmed building FTTP network is an expensive business where payback is determined over many years and its hard and expensive to do – little confused by your missive as Openreach customers are 600 -700 i think (as last count) Service providers . or you don’t like how Openreach has chosen to spend its own money on is commercial footprint -= curious to ascertain which one is which
@Fastman: Either way, what matters is the cost of of deployment per premise and the expected takeup, with the latter especially being influenced by the number of fibre providers. From these simple thoughts one can see that a number of altnets are not good at planning.
@GNewton
Every urban and suburban altnet builder knows they will be competing with both Openreach and VM fibre, if not now then in the future. Both of them have stated their intention to reach well over 20m premises.
Good planning for an urban/suburban altnet means choosing reasonably-sized areas where no-one other than Openreach and VM is building a significant presence. That makes Chelmsford a good choice. Also, Openreach recently upgraded the area so any blocked ducts should have been repaired recently, which is good for an altnet intending to use PIA.
At some point, Cityfibre will need to extend their initial 8m footprint to stay competitive in the wholesale market against OR and VM. Acquiring companies like Lit Fibre will make sense because it’s faster than new build and leaves 1 less network to compete with.
We need more altnets and competition in Wales in general… I would signup with Lit Fibre in a second if they were in my neck of the woods, we need more verity in providers other than VMO2 and BTOR in parts of Carmarthenshire
Looks like Ogi has it on their website, it’s also close to Netomnias rollout so they may consider it
If you go to the Lite Fibre Web site. Sekect a Fibre speed it does not matter which one and then enter a postcode again it does not matter which one other than it need tio be for an area where lite fibre are rolling out. Then scoll down to the bottom and it hould pull up a map showing which areas have fibre available and which areas should go live soon
I’ve been in contact with LitFibre since they started sending leaflets out letting us know they are coming to our area in Clacton.
They was suppose to go live in our area at the end of septemeber (email confirms this) however after recently reaching out to them for an update they advised its now being pushed to December due to build issues.
Interesting facts Litfibre have not shown thereselves since running fibre on the main road, Be-fibre has been down the road off my street and are running fibre. Shamefully I live in a cold-a-sack which as you turn down after a few houses there’s another cold-a-sack which is getting be-fibre and they are not finishing off the road to where I am. I queried this with them and they have advised its not in the plans.
It continues to get even more annoying when they don’t update you unless you chase them.
RIP FTTP.
“The operator appears to be building at a rate of above 10,000 homes passed per month.” What does that sentence actually mean?
Some accuracy would be appreciated.
I think it just means they have pulled fibre into that street, A very different thing from it being available though
You are unlikely to get any meaningful info from them