Full Fibre UK ISP LightSpeed Broadband Confirms Price Freeze
Alternative network builder and ISP LightSpeed Broadband, which aims to deploy a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 200,000 premises in the East of England by the end of 2022 (rising to 1 million by the end of 2025), has shunned the traditional price hikes season by announcing a price freeze promise for customers.
LightSpeed, which employs 120 people, is currently providing service to properties in Boston, Bourne, Braintree, Clacton-on-Sea, Dereham, Downham Market, Fakenham, Holbeach, Hunstanton, King’s Lynn, Long Sutton, Market Deeping, Skegness, Sleaford, Spalding, Stamford, Stowmarket and Thetford, with its network expanding across further towns along the coast of the East of England (25 live towns in total).
New customers normally pay from £24.95 per month on a 24-month term in order to access their 100Mbps (symmetric) speed broadband package, which rises to £39.95 for their top 1Gbps tier. Both packages include a Wi-Fi 6 wireless router, installation and a commitment toward “no in contract price rises“. Plus, installation and the first 3-months of service are currently being offered for free.
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However, the market for alternative networks is aggressively competitive, which means that new operators are constantly trying to attract customers away from more established rivals. In that context it’s interesting to note that, at a time of the year when broadband ISPs tend to put up their prices, LightSpeed has introduced a “price freeze promise” for customers.
Jason Coward, LightSpeed’s Chief Commercial Officer, explained:
“We understand the importance of a fast, reliable broadband service, but we also recognise that customers need to be able to manage their monthly outgoings. We have created a pricing policy which treats our existing and new customers the same way, offering them all the peace of mind that their monthly bill will not go up in price during or at the end of their contract.
Once a customer is on our network, they can earn free months through our referral programme by introducing newcomers to LightSpeed, which adds tangible value to all our users. We aim to back up our fair pricing policy with industry leading service, which is reflected in our TrustPilot score where our customers have rated us as Excellent.”
The announcement doesn’t say how long they will maintain their price freeze, but no doubt consumers will welcome some stability in pricing, particularly when it continues into the post-contract period.
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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Most of the towns listed as available with this altnet don’t yet show up on the Thinkbroadband maps. Installing fibre down the roads is one thing. But making it available to the actual premises is something different, and can take up to another year to complete.
Worth also keeping in mind that it can take a few months for Thinkbroadband to catch up and check everything, as it’s a very laborious process trying to keep track of 100+ network operators and figure out whether / where they’ve all actually gone live. Having said that, LightSpeed have been coy with giving any solid figures on how many premises are actually live. The last figure we had was in March 2022, when they claimed 30,000 premises.
I would rather trust a source that may be a few months behind than one that has full incentive to lie and fudge the numbers for their investors
Well I have it in Skeggy – it’s ok – and I got 6 months free
so what
its ok? Issues with it? Asking as they are doing the town I live and already placed a pre-order. Only two issues I see now is the need to use there combined ONT/router (no bridge mode) and that they use CGNAT.
@dontcare says: mmm salty! 😀
@hil seems okay. I’ve got 500/500 as I don’t need more – but so far it’s okay I think there are not many people taking it up as there was no mail drop I pre registered. As for the ONT/Router I am going to try a TP Link router to see if it works – I know the login details as the nice rep gave them to me after i was installed
@haha
I’ve pre-signed up – but want to use my own UDM Router.
Good to see, I always think when providers offer deals about this time of year “well it won’t be that price for long”.
BT for example will likely be ~14% this year.
The worst bit is those providers that sell you a deal for say £30, with a “normal price” of £63, then apply the price increase to the “normal price” but don’t change your discount. For those, a 14% price increase with those made up numbers would be £8.82 on a £30/m deal.
I agree – The likes of AAISP – even though they are premium have always impressed me – I don’t think they have ever had a price rise more like a price drop and allowance increases – if I could have got BT or Cityfibre FTTP I would have gone with them for sure.
I’ve always loved AAISP, I have a lot of respect for them and I use them for VoIP.
However the usage limits put me off, I’m a heavy user and if I look at the last month have done about 9.4TB on Giganet/Cityfibre. AAISP offer 10TB limits on CF, but if I had a busy month I could easily exceed that.
It’s not worth having to worry about it unfortunately.
Is this really true?! Combined ONT/router (no bridge mode) and they use CGNAT?
Glad I saw the comments regarding CGNAT and the inability to use own equipment, signed up yesterday without even checking that kind of thing as it’s a saving of almost £40 a month compared to my current BT contract. Will be cancelling first thing tomorrow unfortunately.