Quickline Hails Progress Building FTTP Broadband to Isle of Axholme

Broadband ISP Quickline, which is building a new gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) and fixed wireless (5G FWA) network across rural and semi-rural parts of North England and beyond, has revealed that their service has now gone live for thousands of premises in villages across the Isle of Axholme area in North Lincolnshire (England).

The full fibre network went live in the village of Westwoodside in January 2024, following the lighting up of Belton at the end of 2023. Meanwhile, work is now complete to bring full fibre broadband to further addresses across the Isle of Axholme, with the network being extended into communities including Beltoft, West Butterwick, Althorpe and Derrythorpe who can now get connected. More than 2,500 properties in these areas are now able to connect.

And, as part of the government funded Project Gigabit contract recently awarded to Quickline, communities including Crowle, East Lound, Graizelound, Owston Ferry and Wroot are also set to be connected to gigabit-capable, full fibre over the next few months and years.

Residential customers reached by their new full fibre network are typically charged from £29 per month on a 24-month term for 100Mbps (50Mbps upload) speeds with free installation, and that goes up to £49 for their top 900Mbps (450Mbps upload) tier. The first 3 months of service are also free.

Chris Akrill, Head of FTTP Operations at Quickline, said:

“Rural communities have been struggling with poor connectivity for a long time, with slow and unreliable broadband being a daily challenge.

At Quickline our focus is on closing the digital divide between urban and rural areas and connecting those hard-to-reach communities that other providers have left behind.

We’re delighted to be lighting up these communities across the Isle of Axholme where so many people living and working in these small hamlets and villages will really benefit.

We had already made good progress in this rural part of North Lincolnshire and now that we are delivering Project Gigabit for the government, we will be extending our network into many of the other outlying communities in the area.”

Quickline itself is currently being supported by funding of around £500m from Northleaf Capital Partners and c.£104m of public subsidy from Project Gigabit (here and here). The provider holds an aspiration to cove around 500,000 premises in rural and semi-rural areas across Northern England and beyond with “ultrafast broadband” via both their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and 5G based fixed wireless technology “by 2025” (here). Some 200,000 of those rural premises will be tackled by their wireless network, with the other half or more coming from FTTP.