ISP Grain to Build FTTP Broadband Across Part of Warrington
Alternative network operator and UK ISP Grain has revealed that they intend to deploy their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across “more than” 10,000 homes in the Cheshire (England) town of Warrington, which reflects about one tenth of the town’s c.98,000 residential properties.
The announcement doesn’t clarify when the rollout will start or how long it might take. At present most of the town is already being served by Virgin Media’s (VMO2) gigabit-capable network, while Openreach are also deploying FTTP (current coverage is moderate but patchy) and CityFibre have plans to build. But there’s little impact from other AltNet’s right now, although Freedom Fibre does have a small build in the southern area.
Grain has so far unveiled full fibre builds for over 50 locations (plus 150 new build housing developments), which includes parts of various urban areas like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and so forth.
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The initial phase of their rollout aims to cover 400,000 UK premises, but Grain remains silent on their delivery progress, although we don’t believe they’ve quite passed the 100k premises RFS mark yet (although it is possible) as they didn’t make it into the recent list of the largest 17 altnets (here).
Tracy Karam, Grain’s Head of Sales and Marketing, said:
“We pride ourselves on great pricing, fair contract terms and a reliable service and we are pleased to be offering our service to residents in Warrington.
Our Loyalty Price Promise means that we never increase our prices mid-contract and ensure fair and competitive pricing when the time comes to renew your contract. This is especially important to us now, with customers being impacted by the rising cost of living.”
As usual, we did have a look at local planning applications for Warrington and found that Grain appears to be kicking off their build this week, with work taking place around the Orford Avenue area, including neighbouring roads, near the centre of the town.
Customers of the new service, once live, normally pay from just £25.99 per month for a symmetric 100Mbps package on a 12-month term (currently discounted to £19.99) – plus three months at just £1 per month, which goes up to just £49.99 for their top 900Mbps plan (discounted to just £34.99). All of these packages come with unlimited usage, free installation, a router and a pledge to ensure “no in-contract price rises.” The ISP also has a social tariff for those on benefits.
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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“Customers of the new service, once live, normally pay from just £25.99 per month for a symmetric 100Mbps package on a 12-month term”
They offered me it for £15. Still waiting for it to go live though.
Do grain usually show and coverage maps of short term upcoming builds or is it a wait and see. Just wondering if it would be coming to the Kingswood area.
Mine area was on the better internet dashboard nearly a year before it went live.
I think it depends. I have had 5 separate people at Grain categorically assure me they are coming last week of August or first week of September to install the cables to my street.
However this is not showing on any of the street planner sites. It is however showing build plans from them at another area of Newcastle all the way up to starts in December. But my street its nothing. I have been told by Grain this is because they cannot show future build plans until the application to build is approved by the local council. I guess its a case of 3/4 weeks time I can say for definite if what they have been saying is true or not.
Are they still ipv4 only with cg-nat? They also used to lock down routers and not allow users to even change WiFi password, I would like to know if any of this has changed.
Yes they are, their website says they are currently trialling and testing IPv6. But on my asking them if I could be included in that trial. They said it was only a select number of people allowed onto it. They do offer a static IP for an extra £5 per month to get over the CGNAT.
More street digs to lay a 4th (OR, Virgin, City and Grain) fibre past mainly residential addresses. Complete waste of money replicating existing services where take up figures are minimal. Assuming services are similar and take up raises to 50% of properties how can an SP gain a return if they max out at 25% of the available properties-assuming even take-up across all SPs.