ISP GoFibre Start Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Rural Teesdale
Rural broadband ISP GoFibre (BorderLink) has announced that they’ve entered the building phase of their Government state-aid supported £6.6 million Project Gigabit contract, which was awarded in September 2022 (here), to upgrade more than 4,000 hard-to-reach Teesdale premises in Northern England with 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology (Lot 4.01).
The new project aims to cover towns, villages and hamlets across the region. Construction will take place until 2025 with homes and businesses across Middleton-in-Teesdale, Barnard Castle, Gainford, West Auckland and neighbouring communities able to access gigabit-capable broadband from as early as late September 2023.
We should point out that GoFibre secured a huge investment of £164m from Gresham House (BSIF) last year (here) to build their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across 500,000 premises in the North of England and Scottish Borders over the next 3-years – by around the end of 2025, which the new contract will also help to achieve.
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Neil Conaghan, CEO of GoFibre, said:
“For years, rural towns across northern England, including Teesdale, have faced a persistent digital connectivity problem, which has left local communities frustrated and very much behind in terms of infrastructure upgrades.
Through our partnership with the UK government and Durham County Council, construction efforts are now underway to help tackle this digital divide and isolation head on. Our new network will equip residents and businesses in these areas with the tools required to drive innovation and success, both now and in decades to come.
We appreciate your patience during the construction phase and are excited to unveil the benefits of full fibre connectivity to Teesdale later this year.”
Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £36 per month for a 100Mbps package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £69 per month for their top 1000Mbps plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans for just £5 per month extra).
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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Hi Mark. Great to follow your ISP review.
I am now in LymingtonHants, having been in Surrey fir a long time. What’s the state of FTTP coverage and proposed services and suppliers here please? Or where could I discover. Many thanks
I would not that it is now two weeks since GoFibre entered the build phase in Tayport with their fully cloaked contractors. How about only making announcements when you actually have contractors on the ground doing works?
GoFibre want to dig up my expensively laid drive to repair an alleged blockage in the BT Openreach duct so as to lay their cable. Although my current phone and Internet service is not affected, and I have no personal need for superfast broadband, they say that if I do not agree, 12 other houses at the end of my street will have no access to their FTTP service. I really do not want a general contractor digging up and relaying my block paved driveway. What are the alternatives?