Fibrus Put First Homes Live on Project Gigabit Build in Cumbria UK
Broadband ISP Fibrus has today announced that the first homes to be reached via their £108m Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract in Cumbria (here) have just been connected, which occurs only six months after the formal announcement. A total of 60,000 hard-to-reach premises are expected to benefit by completion.
The Cumbria (Lot 28) project was the first large-scale Regional Supplier contract to be awarded under the wider £5bn Project Gigabit programme last year. Various rural towns, villages and hamlets across the region – from Grasmere to Gilsland – are expected to benefit and Fibrus have kept their promise of achieving the first connections during the spring (partly because they’ve already been building a commercial network in the county).
The first homes to benefit are in Staveley, which have been covered by the operator’s latest XGS-PON based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology that can offer broadband speeds of up to 2Gbps (although it’s technically a 10Gbps capable technology).
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Fibrus’ Chief Delivery Officer, Conor Harrison, said:
“From signing the contract late last year, to connecting the first homes in Staveley within six months illustrates the high speed of delivery with which Fibrus has become synonymous.
The efficient execution of this work is testament to the commitment, dedication, and skill of our team members, who are equipped and ready to deliver full fibre broadband to the people of Cumbria.
Fibrus is privileged to be involved in this transformative project which will change the lives of people living in this part of rural and regional England. We will continue to work hard to fulfil our obligations under this exciting project.”
The Infracapital-backed operator has already covered a total of 256,000 premises (240,000 Ready for Service) – mostly via commercial builds – and is home to 36,000 customers, but they also aim to cover 1 million premises over the next 3 years (by Q1 2026) – reflecting around 450,000 premises in N.Ireland (c. 50% of homes in the region) and the rest from England and Scotland. A total of 400,000 UK premises are currently expected to be covered by March 2024.
Customers of Fibrus typically pay from £39.99 (discounted to £19.99) per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (30Mbps upload) package with an included router and free installation, which rises to £59.99 (discounted to £44.99) per month for their top 1000Mbps (300Mbps upload) tier on a 24-month contract term. The service discounts do vary between different parts of their build, and some can also benefit from 3 months of free service.
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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Is there any visibility on exactly what taxpayers are getting for their £108m, and what Fibrus are obligated to deliver? A visit to the gov.uk pages merely located pure waffle about “up to 59,000 hard to reach premises”, where the criteria “up to” can be successfully met by a single install.
Given the challenges of finding any bidders for some other Gigabit lots, I have a sinking feeling that it’s all traditional public sector spending control where money is hosed unnecessarily at some beneficiaries without any proper controls and without monitoring and evaluation, whilst being starved from other reasonable purposes, resulting in chaotically poor outcomes.
Its like 2012 all over again. I started tracking the BT superfast contracts as no one believed they would deliver
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E10000006
If Fibrus deliver, it should be obvious in the stats and on the maps, and we can see spot overbuild versus areas without a Gigabit option already