Zzoomm Bring FTTP Broadband Network to Richmond in Yorkshire
Oxfordshire-based full fibre network builder and UK ISP Zzoomm has added the small Yorkshire town of Richmond, which is home to around 8,400 people, to their rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network. The first customers are already going live.
The operator, which aims to cover 1 million premises across 85 UK towns by the end of 2025 (mostly in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire, West Yorkshire and Cheshire), is investing £1.1m to conduct the build in Richmond and expects to complete their rollout during June 2023. This will add to the 135,000 premises (Ready for Service), including 11,000 customers, that have already been reached.
Customers who take the residential service typically pay from £29.95 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package on a 12-month term with an included router, which goes up to just £64.95 if you want their top 2Gbps tier (or £39.95 for 900Mbps+). Most of their packages also discount the price for the first 3 months of service.
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Chris Collinson, Zzoomm’s CCO, said:
“I’m delighted residents and businesses in Richmond will benefit from our investment in gigafast, future-ready Full Fibre broadband. We look forward to welcoming more customers to our network; who will experience the most reliable broadband in town. We’re proud to have made this investment and we look forward to seeing the positive impact in the community in the years to come.”
At present Zzoomm’s only gigabit-capable competitor in the town will be Openreach, which has the advantage of having already covered the vast majority of local premises. Locals will however benefit from having some real infrastructure level competition for the first time.
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 just signed up in one of their other regions for 1Gbit @ £29.95 for 12 months. No free months at the start though.
£10 for static IP per month seems steep. I had them confirm they don’t implement CGNAT, which I’m happy with as DDNS has served me well for years.
I wonder if they’ll spread north across the A66 and reach my village, which isn’t in any operator’s build plans yet.. my guess is no!
Already have access to over 600 odd suppliers but zzzoom
would rather waste more money overbuilding …. This company has probably less than 3 years left before it folds with their current role out plans
It’s a competitive market, so AltNets working in towns and cities have to be able to fight rival infrastructure, or they might as well not even bother trying. We don’t know the picture of Zzoomm’s network in this area, but it may make sense for other reasons (e.g. community on a core route etc.). On the other hand, it’s absolutely a very challenging market right now and consolidation is looming for a fair few players.
What is it with people around here that want to see companies shut down? Too many openreach fanboys on here.
We need competition and I am pleased at long last we are getting it.
Openreach would not even have laid fibre where I live by now if Zzoomm was not here, or not as quick anyway. As soon as Zzoomm laid fibre up my road, Openreach was not long after.
I hope these other companies do well, I agree that too many in one area is not going to be any good as there are only so many customers. I doubt very much if another network provider will come here, Zzoomm and openreach seems to be having a difficult time getting people to change to fibre as it is.
But I did notice on Wednesday while walking to go and have a few drinks with friends that a few more houses in a couple of roads I walked down have had Zzoomm installed.
I’m in Cannock and had Zzoomm installed as soon as I could. During the first few weeks we had a little downtime, usually during the night. But in the last 6 months it’s been amazing. Always flat out (I’m on the 900 package). Open reach still haven’t done our town, so they are not overbuilding everywhere. BTOR say 2025 for them to do our town.
By all accounts the old router is not very good and people have found adding a different router is the way to go. they do install a new router now, so hopefully that is better.
This article fails to mention that openreach completed its build in Richmond last year and has had an lot of uptake. What an waste overbuilding.
With Openreach, there are quite a lot of “not spots” for Richmond, North Yorkshire (I live here), usually the streets not fed by overhead poles but with BT ducts that have not been touched probably since the 60s/70s when the houses were built … so a lot of the copper pairs to each house are direct in ground.
I asked the local MP (Rishi Sunak) why my street was not covered yet but all the adjoining ones were showing as fttp available and we got a reply from Openreach saying they are not building any more fttp in Richmond so those of us without fttp can only hope for zzoomm or we stay on non-gfast fttc.
Amusingly, zzoomm seems to be trenching their own cables, judging by the new tarmac on various pavements and roads and on other streets they are using openreach’s existing ducts as I saw the BT manhole covers up and zzoomm pulling cable through in early May.
Richmond actually had NYnet fibre years before openreach started pulling fibre last year. NYnet serves all the public WiFi in the town centres of North Yorkshire, schools and GP surgeries, can be requested by other businesses, but does not offer residential connections.
So on this occasion, BT/Openreach are also an over builder.