Complete Fibre to Build Full Fibre for Thousands of Raven Housing Homes UPDATE

The Raven Housing Trust, which owns and manages more than 7,000 homes across the South East of England, has agreed a deal that will see Complete Fibre deploy their open access full fibre infrastructure across the company’s estate of rented and shared ownership homes in Surrey and Sussex.

Just to recap, Complete Fibre aren’t themselves a broadband provider. Instead, the company deploys a Single Open Access, “plug and play” style fibre network from a central distribution point to each flat. Multiple ISPs can then connect to this network’s PON/GPON (Passive Optical Network / Gigabit PON) and do this by plugging in to the Complete Fibre distribution point, which is often housed in common comms cupboards.

The announcement doesn’t spell out precisely how many homes will benefit from the deal, although Complete Fibre’s solution is normally targeted toward large residential buildings (Multi-Dwelling Units are notoriously tricky to upgrade) and it’s noted that approximately half of RHT’s homes are MDUs.

Chris McLain, CEO of Complete Technology Group, said:

“We’re delighted to be partnering with Raven to oversee its digital connectivity strategy and drive greater digital inclusivity through improving access to Full Fibre.

We share the collective vision of ensuring everyone has access to safe, fast, reliable broadband, and this way of working accelerates Full Fibre rollout and gives residents greater choice of providers. MDUs are typically more complex to build into, and Complete Fibre gets residents connected quicker, future-proofs buildings for landlords, and supports network expansion for ISPs.”

The catch here is that the announcement doesn’t mention any specific ISPs or broadband network operators as supporting the deployment, which we can only hope will change, as without those there will be a network but no service for residents to take.

The other potential caveat is that not all operators want to harness Complete Fibre’s solution (issues of future cost, different kit / approach etc.) and would thus rather roll out their own fibre instead, but once it’s deployed then that can make landlords reluctant to entertain similar upgrades from other providers.

UPDATE 11:24am

A spokesperson for Complete Fibre has informed us that their “first ISP is already confirmed as part of the partnership with Raven, meaning residents will have the ability to connect to Full Fibre“, although they won’t be able to name the provider until the details are finalised.

“We are currently in the process of finalising the details of the first connection schedules to the buildings and we will be in touch with further information in due course when the first customers go live. For now, the focus of this announcement is the installation of the Full Fibre infrastructure to help combat digital poverty. Crucially, multiple ISPs can connect to this infrastructure – a safer, faster approach, and one that ensures higher safety and compliance standards for landlords, given there is no longer the need for each ISP to enter the building and install its own infrastructure,” said the spokesperson.