Wildanet Name 9 New Devon UK Areas for FTTP Broadband Build UPDATE
Rural broadband ISP Wildanet, which is rolling out a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of South West England (mostly Cornwall), has today revealed the next 4 locations in Devon that will benefit from their ongoing infrastructure build.
The provider, which is being supported by an investment of £50m from the Gresham House British Strategic Investment Infrastructure Fund (BSIF) and recently scooped a £36m Project Gigabit contract to cover another 19,250 premises across rural parts of Cornwall (here), has already announced the build for two locations in neighbouring Devon – Totnes and Dartington (reflecting up to 6,000 premises between them).
The latest announcement confirms that the next phase of their build in Devon is also planned to reach Ashburton, Axminster, Chagford, Holsworthy, Ipplepen, South Brent, South Molton, Yealmpton and Yelverton. As part of the move, Wildanet said they would create 60 new jobs and open a new 35,000 sq ft warehouse in Bideford to act as a hub for their local expansion.
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However, it’s worth noting that some of the new rollout locations are already being targetted by gigabit-capable broadband rivals, such as Jurassic Fibre and Airband in Axminster etc.
Helen Wylde, Wildanet CEO, said (Business Cornwall):
“This is an exciting announcement for us and a significant moment in the growth of the business and our ambitions to level up connectivity across the south west.
We’re looking to bring the same energy and can-do approach to Devon as we have delivered in Cornwall and look forward to working with communities, businesses, national and local government to extend the transformational benefits of gigabit-capable broadband to rural and hard-to-reach areas of the county.”
Full fibre customers typically pay from £39.99 per month (currently discounted to £25) to receive a 200Mbps (100Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with free installation, which rises to £59.99 if you want their top 900Mbps (400Mbps upload) package. Wilanet also offers a cheap social tariff for those on ‘Universal Credit‘, which costs £20 per month on a 12-month contract for downloads of 30-100Mbps and uploads of 6-50Mbps.
UPDATE 4:44pm
Wildanet has informed us that they actually announced 9 new locations today, which we’ve added above as they weren’t included in the earlier report.
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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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As for the “can do energy and approach in Cornwall”:
My parents’ place is in the Cornish part of their list – it’s on the map, has a photo and everything, says “High Speed Broadband has arrived in X” – but entering a postcode only brings up 50/10 (are they reselling someone who uses Openreach where their own network does not exist? they can and do get 80/20) and then the next step says it’s not actually available at all.
Their earlier checker was in fact more useful – it at least said the postcode was on their list for a potential rollout.
Given that this is within spitting distance of Openreach FTTP (if I stand in the road I can see properties that have it!) and likely to have those gaps such as my parents’ place filled in the next couple of years, I still am not sure why Wildanet are bothering (or why the government has given them money to do it)
Really good a company is investing in those areas. They really are in the sticks.
Have to laugh at the idea of Bideford, on the north side of Dartmoor, being a “local hub” for the cluster of towns in South Devon listed for expansion. Anyone who’s tried driving between north and south Devon will know that they’re virtually different countries.
Also quite a bit of overbuild here, with both Openreach and Airband active in at least some of the listed towns, but I suppose the more the merrier…
And Axminster gets a mention as a target, that’s 70 odd miles and two hours from Bideford. Maybe they’re using an Australian definition of the word “local”?