Grain Add 4 More UK Locations to their FTTP Broadband Rollout
Broadband ISP and network builder Grain (Grain Connect) has today added four new locations to their ongoing UK rollout of a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which will see them expand across parts of Whitley Bay and Thornaby in the North East, Blackpool in the North West and Tonypandy in Wales.
The provider, which is being supported by an investment of around £200m from Equitix and others (here), has already announced deployments across nearly 50 towns and cities, including Hull, Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and many more.
Grain has tended to make a habit out of targeting areas where there is likely to be plenty of competition from gigabit-capable broadband rivals and today’s announcement is no exception. For example, Blackpool has builds from a variety of different operators, such as Virgin Media, Cityfibre, ITS Technology and others.
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However, as per usual, Grain hasn’t provided any information on the timescale for these deployments or how many premises they will aim to pass in each location.
Roland Barzegar, CFO of Grain, said:
“Our journey is an exciting one as we continue to raise the bar with our service and pricing.
Not only has it meant that we have created job opportunities in Carlisle and across the UK, but it has provided choice for residents in the communities we have connected.
Our accelerated build programme has allowed us to get to many of these new areas sooner than we expected, which is a win-win for customers who are joining us.
As a team, we are hugely motivated by the feedback we are receiving and the national reputation we are now growing, and we are excited about Grain’s future.”
Customers of the service, once live, can expect to pay from just £25.99 per month for a symmetric speed 100Mbps package on a 12-month term (currently discounted to £17.99), which goes up to just £49.99 for their top 900Mbps plan (currently discounted to just £29.99). All of these packages come with unlimited usage, free installation, a router and a pledge to ensure “no in-contract price rises.”
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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I don’t understand why providers target areas already with gigabit coverage.
There’s plenty of urban areas (ie cheap to deploy to) that have nothing but FTTC available.
Surely the take up numbers would be better in an area with less competition?
I don’t understand either, really does annoy me when I’m stuck on slow speeds and another article pops up about an area getting fibre when they already have it.
I don’t know the answer to this either but I would harbour something relating to bottom feeding.
Openreach deployed their FTTP and a local altnet then dug it up some months later to put their own stuff in too. Altnet was done in the space of 3-4 days. Their cabling both run to the same exact pole.
I’m told the Altnet will go live either this week or next, so I should be on gigabit by then. (i’m not holding my breath though).
“Altnet was done in the space of 3-4 days.”. Like I said in my comment, that is not Grain. They are going at a snails pace. Openreach and Cityfibre are infinitely faster. And CityFibre are slow themselves. But Grain are in a league of their own for slowness of their install in Newcastle
There is practically zero coverage in Tonypandy to date from any provider!
@mrpops2ko
Yeah I saw CF doing some work yesterday they went to the BT pole and the cut in the pavement runs from there across the road to some rather large manhole covers.
They are going *very* slow in their build in Newcastle. For the last 8 months all they’ve been doing is a small estate in Heaton and nothing more. With nothing on the buildplans for the next three months on OneNetwork other than them still doing that one estate. Openreach did the exact same estate in a fortnight. At the rate they are going they will complete Newcastle in about 2050.
They have seamingly given up on grimsby and cleethopes too. Signs are up on my parents street saying that they are deploying soon since april but nothing on the horizon.
Hi Anthony
I actually install for Grain and I can honestly say that we don’t move at a snails pace.
Newcastle is notoriously hard to dig and finding a route in a congested footway can almost be impossible.
Therefore design changes are needed which takes time and Newcastle City Council are notoriously hard on workers imposing lots of restrictions on workers under their authority and if these restrictions aren’t followed then companies can incur massive fines.
It’s frustrating when you look and think nothing is happening but I’m sure the guys on the ground would explain if they were asked.
I hate seeing companies slated on here before anyone knows the facts.
Seems to be going ok in Sunderland, we have city fibre doing work for telegraph install but this would be a 1st floor rear of property of install, however grain is digging in December and that will be a front of property install like virgin so it works out good for me. I did sign up to £34.99 pm 900 however after seeing it’s gone down to £29.99 they have moved me onto that.
I was expecting Grain to come to Blackpool – they’ve been digging up a couple of roads a few streets away from me for the last couple of weeks. CityFibre are back up and running after months of inaction but they’re starting to the north of the town, and ITS seem to only be available in a tiny area of an enterprise zone down by the airport. My exchange is on the Openreach list for by 2025, so we’ll see.
It will be good to see some competition in Blackpool (South Shore).
VM, really slow copper, or ‘6G’ (!).
In Lincoln, VM is the only one who does GB speed, they only offer fttc. All the other offer around 300mb or less.
Grain are installing FTTP in the new build development I’ve recently bought in, but I won’t be using them. Maybe someone more in the know can inform me, but it’s my understanding that Grain use GC-NAT, making it pretty useless for anyone that enjoys online multiplayer gaming. I’ve struggled before with GC-NAT when I used Origin Broadband, but they were able to supply me with a static IPv4 – something Grain won’t provide for residential users.
And i got all excited by seeing this news (Installing in tonypandy). then to read your post about cg-nat. Im a gamer!
@Redbull2K
They are planning on rolling out IPv6, which should solve the issue, but until then, you’re stuck with IPv4 and GC-NAT. It wouldn’t be an issue if they’d let you buy a static IP, but that’s reserved for their business packages only, and they’re more expensive, and not symmetrical.
In terms of gaming, GC-NAT is mostly going to affect in-game voice comms, but you may have issues joining parties too – if a console gamer.
PC gaming might be less of an issue, if you use Discord for comms.
Don’t forget folks that Grain sounds good, until you realise it uses CGNAT.
This prevents you from being able to play many online games, access a lot of file transfer services and will not function correctly with many VPNs so if you work from home it may not be right for you.
They do offer a personal IPv4 service but it’s business only and over £100 a month.
Disgustingly exploititative.
Better off with a real provider.