Exascale Expand West Midlands Full Fibre Rollout and Upgrades ONT
Shropshire-based UK ISP and alternative broadband provider Exascale has today provided ISPreview with an update on the latest locations to benefit from their rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in the West Midlands. The provider has also changed the Optical Network Terminals (ONT) they use.
Just to recap. Exascale is a smaller operator that has been gradually expanding their Dark Fibre and FTTP network at their own pace, starting with the northern part of Telford (target of c.4,000 premises) and more recently expanding across a small patch of West Bromwich.
The latest update we’ve been sent states that they’ve also built into the village of Horton in Telford, and are now building into Preston Upon the Weald Moores, Kindersley, Lilleshall and Chetwynd Aston, all of which has been supported by the UK Government’s rural focused Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS).
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Alongside its existing vendor of Optical Line Terminal (OLT) equipment (Nokia), Exascale has this week also started working with Genexis, which is a specialist in xPON and Point-to-Point Optical Network Terminals (ONT) and media converters, to deploy their residential FibreTwist ONT customer premises equipment (this is the optical modem that gets screwed to your interior wall).
Thomas Bibb, CEO of Exascale, said:
“We recognise the need for a diverse and vendor agnostic ecosystem, and working with Genexis alongside distribution partner Kenton Group has enabled us to do just this. The Genexis FibreTwist ONT doesn’t only just work with a plethora of OLT vendors, but reduces engineer installation times, the need for furniture to cover any holes drilled internally and future truck rolls for replacements or upgrades.
Simply twist the old unit off and the new one onto the backplate – We were sold the moment we saw it at a recent Connected Britain event.”
You can see a little video of what this means below:
Residential customers can choose packages that start from £25.99 per month for an unlimited 50Mbps service on a 24-month term and that goes up to just £48.99 for their top symmetric speed 900Mbps (average) tier, which currently includes free activation and WiFi6 capable Mesh WiFi router.
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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[comment removed: trolling, again]
Thats OK Phil, you’d already told people on TBB it was “too expensive” so you wouldn’t sign up.
I’m sure they’re not losing sleep.
To be fair to dontcare, to live up to their name they’d need to pass at least 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 premises.
How many emails / messages have you sent Thomas Bibb and in what space of time?
They’ve done 4,000 mostly rural premises where they’re unlikely to be overbuilt any time soon.
They are, for now, a rural provider.
Why would they drop everything and build to a random suburb of housing estates on the other side of the town to their existing build.
What you basically mean is they aren’t doing what you want when you want.
Welcome to reality.
Fibre is expensive to build out. Their point of presence is in Trench Lock, the network has been built out from there. Urban Telford is already well served for fibre by BT and Virgin, the rural areas aren’t and that’s why the government is subsidising fibre networks in rural areas. It’s tantalisingly close to my house in Hadley Castle but not coming to me any time soon for financial reasons. It’s disappointing but in their shoes I’d make the same decision. If Telford & Wrekin Council had chosen a brand new fibre network from Exascale for its schools and offices it could have been expanded all over the borough but they chose to waste a ton of our taxes on Virgin’s creaky old network instead and line Richard Branson’s pockets.
It’s about time you were banned from all broadband / technology forums along with social discussion areas like this.
Usually I don’t agree with banning, but there has to come a point when enough is enough and people are prevented from acting in this way. How many years do we have to put up with reading the drivel you insist on posting, and the insults you dish out willy nilly against so many companies.
Mark – this poster is vexatious and you really do need to consider the reputational damage people like this are inflicting upon your site. From a business point of view this person would have been placed on the “do not respond” or “no service” for any company I have worked for.
Im sure there is a press release somewhere saying they would cover the whole of Telford by 2023 lol!
Then it all lied!
They said they ‘aimed’ to. They promised nothing.
Quoting Kitz: ‘There will be tears later down the line and you will go crying until you try find some way to weasel out of the contract ensuring another ISP is out of pocket’.
Even if/when Exascale build to your area they would be wise to not touch you with a bargepole. They’ll spend the money connecting you and, like pretty much every other contract you’ve agreed in years, you’ll try and find some way out of it either at the slightest hint of issues or when buyers’ remorse kicks in.
Besides, you said over 2 years ago, quote: ‘I wouldn’t sign up’. That’s probably best for everyone. A small business investing heavily doesn’t need a customer that’s a nightmare to support and will play the disability card to get out of a legally agreed contract. If you can play it to get out of one you shouldn’t be able to enter into one.