Brsk Builds Full Fibre Broadband Cover to 500,000 UK Homes UPDATE

Network operator and ISP Brsk, which is deploying a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across the West Midlands and North West of England (rollout plan), has revealed that they’ve now passed a key milestone by expanding to cover half a million homes (up from 450,000 on 2nd March 2024).

The operator – fuelled by an investment of at least £259m – is currently building out its new network across parts of West Yorkshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, and the West Midlands – Birmingham and The Black Country, to be specific. Some 28,000 customers (1st Mar 2024) already use the service.

According to today’s announcement, the operator is now adding over 30,000 new homes to their network coverage on a monthly basis, which is roughly in line with their existing trends. But at the time of writing, we don’t yet know how many of their built premises are Ready for Service (RFS), although the gap between built and RFS is usually only c.10-20k (typically reflecting wayleave delays in secured MDU coverage).

Residential prices start at £23 per month for a 100Mbps (symmetric) package and rise to £32 for 900Mbps on a 24-month term, including a router and free installation.

Ian Kock, Brsk’s Chief Operating Officer, said:

“We are extremely proud of what our team has achieved in such a short period of time. Our focus has been on reaching scale and building a high-quality network as efficiently as possible. Our build engine is producing 30k plus homes per month across four regions, and we are well on our way to achieving our ambition of providing better broadband to one million homes.”

The news represents more positive progress for Brsk, particularly as it occurs during a period where many other alternative networks are having to scale-back their deployments and cut jobs, largely due to rising build costs and high interest rates that make raising new investment difficult. At the same time the operator has recently been linked to a possible merger with Netomnia, which are also partly backed by Advencap (here).

Despite the rumours, brsk said they remain focused on connecting underserved towns and villages in the West Midlands and North West of the UK, across Bradford, Calderdale, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Merseyside, The Black Country and Birmingham, with “further areas to be announced later this year.”

UPDATE 8:55am

The RFS figure is 486,184.