Rural ISP Ecom Bring FTTP Broadband to Westcott in Bucks
Broadband ISP Ecom, which is building a new gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband network to remote rural communities across Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire in England, has announced that they’ve just extended again and started to go live in the village of Westcott – including the sizeable Westcott Venture Park.
The small provider, across all of their locations, has so far managed to reach around 1,000 premises and most of those have taken their service. The high take-up isn’t too surprising because many of these are demand-led builds and often end up being supported by the Government’s gigabit broadband voucher scheme.
However, Ecom’s new deployment in Westcott, which is working to tackle both the business park and residential village, ended up being funded from their own pocket. So far a total of 173 premises are considered to be in-scope of this build, which could rise up to 226 once the outskirts of the community are included (depending upon demand). A big chunk of that is a business park on the A41.
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Openreach’s own FTTP passes nearby to the north, but it doesn’t appear to enter much into the village. Oddly, we also spotted that OFNL seemed to have deployed FTTP to a farmer’s warehouse and cricket club to the south of the village, but that too has not gone any further into the community proper.
Homes on the new network can typically take packages from 300Mbps (£36 inc. VAT per month) and this goes all the way up to 1Gbps (£66) on a 12-month term. But one issue here is that their activation costs for areas outside of voucher schemes are currently listed as being up to £500 +vat, although actual installation prices do vary and are subject to survey.
Ecom are also going to offer two “leased line equivalent” services to businesses inside the venture park area – 1G symmetrical for £95/month +vat or 10G symmetrical for £345/month.
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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A late entry into the most unsafe street-works of 2023 award.
Private road I would think and potentially people building their own drop.
Looking at what the guy driving the plough is wearing he doesn’t strike me as a streetworks professional and no idea what the man nearest the camera is up to. Would expect him to be backfill raking and reseeding.
Any idea what he’s doing with that thing?
Thats a private road leading to a single farm house
>>Thats a private road leading to a single farm house
Ah, thanks. So none existent safety at works, even down to zero personal protection such as foot protection given by trainers, zero consideration to passing traffic etc is okay because it is a private road.
I’ve noticed that often, works that completely ignores basic safe systems of work and publish photos of such putting workers and passing road users at risk also ignore basic quality of installation as well. Not always, of course.
Sometimes works that totally ignore the safety of workers and the public also have high standards of quality. But not often, if at all.
To be fair if it was done on a private road going to a farmhouse it is really no different from work being done next to a really, really long driveway.
Looks as though the local folks are putting microducts in to ensure no excess construction charge and these are drop microduct.
If that’s the case looks awful if viewed through the lens of regular work but if all private folk doing work on private land to get full fibre phatness it’s okay.
Old school BT tonner in the background. Another cowboy outfit that isn’t going to last !
It’s a great bit of kit actually and absolutely invaluable. Onboard compressor and hydraulic pack to run the blowing machines, workbench in the back for splicing. Heater, lights, even has 110v generator output.
@XGS: Having looked closely, you’ll find it’s just another rake, nearly hidden by the grass. The guy using the rake isn’t expecting to be going into any ploughed fields with that footwear anytime soon, i would think!
Missed that: ta!
if you were talking to guy in the foreground, he would probably tell you it’s a really important and good paid job he’s doing, in fact, he’s raking it in.
Ba-doom-tish!
Looks like the wild-west in terms of Health & Safety. Private road or not, my firm would have red-carded such Civils before they even planned such work.