ISP Toob Expands FTTP Broadband into the Locks Heath Area
Hampshire-based network builder and gigabit broadband ISP toob, which is rolling out their own full fibre (FTTP) network and also sharing some of CityFibre’s similar infrastructure in parts of South England, has today announced that they’re extending their own network near Fareham into the nearby Locks Heath area.
Under the new plan, toob will invest £5 million to extend their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure into Locks Heath and the surrounding area – covering 12,000 homes and businesses. The new network should be ready for its first connections in July 2024, with the deployment continuing across Locks Heath, Park Gate, Warsash, and the surrounding areas.
Toob was originally backed by £75m from the Amber Infrastructure Group (here) and “up to” £87.5m from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (here). During 2023 the operator also secured £160m of additional funding (debt financing) from Ares Management‘s Infrastructure Debt strategy (here) – this can be upsized to £300m over time to support growth.
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Nick Parbutt, CEO of toob, said:
“We are delighted that our network is expanding to Locks Heath, Park Gate, Warsash, and the surrounding areas. 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. That’s why we are committed to delivering the fastest, 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“. But toob is due to increase the pricing for new customers from £25 to £29 in mid-May (£33 thereafter).
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 and Linkedin.
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Finally my area, but also quite a lot of bad reviews and outages building for this ISP. So I’n a while off my Virgin end date, but now not rushing to be a Toob customer with a static IP.
Hopefully they won’t put telegraph poles up my area as currently there aren’t any.
They were pulling fibre through existing OR ducts around Priory Park yesterday.
Priory Park my old area where we first lived. I did see cable pulling when coming back from Warsash this morning, but based on the Better Internet Dashboard I think BT are also doing work in the area, so I don’t know who.
It was Toob
https://photos.app.goo.gl/dFZeEVZcdwAmqsJx6
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pE1npPbNaSCVCyg18
Worst kept secret given they have been at this for over a month and they have finally updated their coverage map as well. You know what is a surrounding area to locks heath, Whiteley! Still not on the map. Come on toob, openreach are clearing all the ducts for you, it’ll be super easy.
Whitely also been a strange one, even getting a mobile signal over there is a challenge. Wonder what has been provisoned on the new housing estate behind Tesco and beyond.
I’m in contract until Dec 24, but I’ll be depart Virgin for the better speed and no contract dance every 18 months when they say they want to double the price. Virgin hasn’t been a problem at all, I purchased a 4G Smarty failover setup wired into the second WAN port on my firewall and had zero outage in near 2.5 years with Virgin.
900/900 for Toob though, it’s the upload I’m interest in when I’m away and want to VPN back to home. O2 will get ditched as TBH utter rubbish for speeds and reliability. Regret leaving Vodafone.
pfsense plus for the firewall setup.
So summer of 2025 it’ll be mobile switch too, 20+ years with Vodacom/Vodfone and then 2 years with O2.
Have heard that Toob will be making some redundancies and reducing their build. Sounds like it may be the time they are finally bought out by Cityfibre
How do you propose to reach the houses after posts are erected?