ISP Toob Finally Starts £13m FTTP Broadband Rollout in Woking
Network builder and UK gigabit broadband ISP toob has today announced that their long-planned £13m project to deploy a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the Surrey (England) town of Woking has begun. The work is expected to result in 32,000 local homes and businesses gaining access to their network.
Construction of the new network in Woking has already begun around the town centre, and the first customers are expected to be connected by the end of this year. But toob won’t be the only gigabit-capable network in the area, with Virgin Media having already covered the town. On top of that, Openreach’s full fibre lines are also being built and a number of other operators, such as Netomnia (YouFibre) and Box Broadband, have active builds.
The operator, which was originally backed by £75m from the Amber Infrastructure Group (here) and “up to” £87.5m from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (here), recently secured £160m of additional funding (debt financing) from Ares Management‘s Infrastructure Debt strategy (here) – this can be upsized up to £300m over time to support future growth opportunities.
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Nick Parbutt, CEO of toob, said:
“We are delighted that we will be able to offer our service to Woking. toob has been built on our belief that access to fast, reliable broadband at an affordable price is a necessity in today’s increasingly digital world. We are committed to delivering the fastest and most reliable service, using the latest full-fibre technology, at an affordable price.”
Customers of the service typically pay just £25 per month on an 18-month term for their 900Mbps (symmetric speed) package (£29 thereafter), which includes a router, unlimited usage, free installation and a pledge of “no in-contract price rises“.
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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Guildford has been on their website as “coming soon” since the end of 2020. It’s so frustrating when Altnets put areas on their page for YEARS and do nothing.
Same with Swish in Cranleigh, they’ve done a few estates in the village and nothing else. Even though they mailshot all the other places saying they were “coming soon” and to watch out for their roadworks in your neighbourhood. 3 years later, still no ability to order for a massive chunk of the village.
BTs inability to communicate dates actually may be doing them a favour rater than the verbose altnet approach of “mailshot everyone saying soon” and then rarely delivering or delivering 2 and a half years later.
There’s a fine line between canvassing interest to establish a build is viable, and promising availability. It seems most altnets blur or wantonly cross that line, and as a result end up being seen to over promise and under deliver. Where OR build FTTP without fanfare, it’s often the case that the first people know is when their own ISP contacts them to say “do you want 300+ Mbps, we can connect you now?”
I can’t see any easy way round that for altnets – they need to establish if there’s likely demand, and they need to give good advance notice in the hope that people will think of them when recontracting.