Zzoomm See 10 Percent Full Fibre Take-up in Penistone After 1 Month
Oxfordshire-based alternative UK broadband network and ISP Zzoomm, which have built their 2Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 190,000 premises (RFS) in England, has revealed that their network has already achieved a take-up rate of 10% in the South Yorkshire town of Penistone – after only going live in March 2024.
The operator, which is being fuelled by an equity investment of £100m from Oaktree Capital (here) and a £100m debt facility via an international banking consortium (here), has typically focused their roll-out on smaller towns in parts Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Cheshire. But their deployment has recently suffered from a slow-down and job cuts (here and here).
The deployment in Penistone, which has a population of around 25,000, is a fairly recent development and the main reason for the strong take-up can be at least partly attributed to the fact that Zzoomm are likely to be the only gigabit-capable broadband provider available (Openreach only has a tiny bit of FTTP).
On the other hand, it’s currently unclear how much of the town Zzoomm actually covers, although the operator does indicate that the “majority of the build” is now complete (not clear if this covers the “majority” of the town). We should add that Northern Fibre, FullFibre Ltd and Quickline are also known to have plans for parts of the Penistone town or surrounding areas.
Chris Collinson, Chief Commercial Officer at Zzoomm, said:
“We’re excited to see such a significant number of Penistone residents joining Zzoomm in just the few weeks since completing the majority of the build. It’s evident that the residents and businesses of Penistone recognise the advantages of gigafast broadband and are embracing our investment in cutting-edge Full Fibre technology.”
We’re thrilled to foster innovation by providing access to our gigafast Full Fibre network to homes and businesses in Penistone. At Zzoomm, we firmly believe in ensuring that everyone has access to dependable, forward-thinking broadband services.”
Customers who take their residential service typically pay from £29.95 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package on a 12-month term with an included router, which goes up to £54.95 (normally £64.95) if you want their top 2Gbps tier. The ISP is also offering a £100 Amazon gift card to new customers on some plans.
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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Just shows how big an advantage it is to be first in the street. 10% in a month is a fantastic result.
They were first here for a lot of the city, but did not get a great amount, but then saying that, looking at houses when I go for walks it seems as if people are not really going for FTTP, Openreach or Zzoomm.
I went for a walk to one of our retail estates on Sunday and out of over 300 houses I passed, I counted 13-14 houses that had FTTP of any type. Sure there were some i could not see due to hedges, but most I could.
Yes, it is only a small sample, but I walk that way a few times and have a peak, something to do while walking and I have not seen much of an increase.
I also realise it is just two and a half streets 🙂
@Ad47uk: It has to be remembered that some more of the houses you passed on your walk may have Full Fibre installed, only the connection having been spliced inside, so no Customer Service Point needed outside. Although Openreach stopped their engineers from using field fit connectors a few years ago, i believe some of the installers still use them in certain circumstance, i was told this by an Openreach Full Fibre fitter. These facts may add some more properties to the small number of 14 you counted on your walk. Some people may just be content with their 10/40 FTTC internet line which existing customers can keep, or migrate to another ISP on the same speed, even in Stop Sell/Priority Exchange areas. Openreach amended the rules to allow this in September 2021, covered by ISpreview in June of the same year.
*circumstances
Pinis-tone, Penis-tonne or Penistone?
If you are serious, more like Pen-iss-tun actually
If it’s anything like my Zzoomm connection in Crewe it’s awful worst experience ever this ISP. After 5pm my speeds go from 1,000Mbps to 20/50Mbps. Latency goes from 8/9ms to 40/50ms. Zzoomm keep saying they are upgrading capacity etc but it’s been awful since start of March. Wish I stayed with EE on the 900Mbps package can’t wait for my contract to end in 9 months.
My speeds in Hereford have been fine for months, there were a couple of problems the first month or so after I had it installed, but the network was new, so I just took it as teething problems. Maybe this is the problem you are having, hopefully it will settle down soon. For the last 8 months mine has been perfect. The odd time late at night they do firmware updates that knock out the broadband for a few minutes, but few and far between now.
Don’t rely on their router, it is not great, certainly for Wi-fi, I got myself a TP-link one for my previous ISP and use that.
No complaints from me and i know a few people now that have changed to Zzoomm and fine for them as well, even with Zzoomm own router.
Have you asked to be let out of contract penalty free?
@Jack No because I’m out of my 14 cooling off. It’s not just Crewe that has issues. Areas around Crewe are also affected. Zzoomm have put on the Facebook page group “Zzoomm in Cheshire” that a update is coming today so customers will get full speeds 24/7 hopefully. But a lot of customers are not happy at the moment in Cheshire with the service Zzoomm offer at the moment. @Ad47uk I’ve had no issues with the router from Zzoomm, I just hope my connection just works 24/7 after today but time will tell.