Full Fibre Altnet LightSpeed Broadband Shifts UK HQ to Peterborough
Network operator and UK ISP LightSpeed Broadband, which was last year acquired by Kompass Kapital (here) after suffering job cuts and a slowdown of their full fibre (FTTP) build in the East of England (here), has announced that they’re shifting their HQ from Spalding (Lincolnshire) to Peterborough (Cambridgeshire).
The operator was, until last year, still busy expanding their gigabit-capable broadband network at full pace across parts of 32 market towns in South Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Rutland. But the deal with Kompass Kapital also involved an unspecified amount of new capital for the business, which is being utilised to continue developing and expanding their network and ISP offerings.
According to the latest update, they now cover 250,000 premises, although independent data from Thinkbroadband puts the ‘Ready for Service’ (RFS) figure at a much lower level of 140,000 (note: TBB are currently a bit behind on their data checking). But the announcement also indicates that the HQ shift may be at least partly related to the fact that they’re now planning to add another 150,000 properties across the East and West Midlands.
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A spokesman for Lightspeed Broadband said (Lincs Online):
“LightSpeed Broadband is continuing the expansion of its 250,000 premises full fibre network by adding an additional 150,000 properties across the East and West Midlands. Our network will soon bring multi-Gigabit full fibre broadband to homes and businesses in parts of the UK that have, until now, been starved of good internet connections.
While our roots have been planted firmly in Spalding for the past three years, we do anticipate relocating our headquarters to Peterborough in the coming months. This is spurred by the improved transport infrastructure provided by the town, which in turn facilitates the expansion of our network and enables us to better cater to our expanding customer base.
Despite this move, we remain committed to maintaining strong ties with the Spalding community, where many of our satisfied customers reside. We’re excited for our ongoing expansion, and we want to assure our customers that our dedication to providing fantastic broadband services will continue unabated.
In fact, it’s our aim to provide services that step beyond broadband into areas that include VoIP, home security, entertainment and more. We’re doing this because we believe that being digitally connected transforms lives.”
Residential customers of the service tend to pay from £24.95 per month on a 24-month term for symmetric speeds of 100Mbps, which rises to £29.99 (discounted from £39.95) for their top 1000Mbps tier. The package includes a WiFi 6 capable wireless router and there’s also a £30 one-off setup fee to pay.
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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To add to Marks article…while the thinkbroadband figures are behind, it is very much the case that have looked periodically at places Lightspeed say they are live e.g. Cromer but have yet to find anything beyond lots of ‘We are working on it’
So reality is when other networks are actually popping up as RFS in areas the time is spent a lot more mapping them, than keep rechecking the same old roads with no progress.
Its exactly the same in Spalding where they were headquartered. They have offered FTTP to the places like New build homes which Openreach already cover, but little has been done for the majority of the people, its just been sat at “working on it” for over 18 months now.
Their rollout plans are still a mess. For example, they built out into Clacton which already had several other fibre providers, hence this was a loss-making exercise. They announced that Manningtree would be included, about 2 years ago, and then virtually abandoned it, now Gigaclear has taken over this town. There are plenty of areas in the East of England without any fibre-providers, yet Lightspeed won’t touch them.
The former CEO Steve Haines announced the availability of static IP addresses about 2 1/2 years ago (see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/11/lightspeed-broadband-list-next-fttp-rollout-towns-in-essex-and-norfolk.html#comment-254331), they never followed through on this, they still use CGNAT, so simple things like web cameras, web or game servers or many of the IOT devices won’t work.
Static IPs are now available but literally within the last week or so as I emailed on the off chance and now have one.
I think they might be back in Manningtree. There seems to be some work planned on bidb.
They gave me a year free after they heard I was 9 months away from end of contract with BT. Ran both alongside each other so I busted BT to the basic and put the router in the cupboard
Renovating an old building and supporting local sport are good things of course but focusing on the job in hand would have been better.
3 years of empty lightspeed chambers and pole brackets in North Norfolk has been frustrating, Next Fibre have stepped into the vacuum when it’s was Lightspeeds to have. Such a shame.
They have 17k customers connected at the minute. My friend works there as an engineer. They connect 150 premises per week.