Brsk Extend FTTP Broadband Build to 2 North West England Towns
Alternative network operator and UK ISP Brsk has today announced that their roll-out of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network is being extended to include 60,000 premises across St Helens in Merseyside, and neighbouring Ashton-in-Makerfield in Wigan, Greater Manchester.
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). Some 41.2k customers (up from 28k on 1st Mar 2024) already use the service, which has so far covered 552,000 premises passed (536,000 as Ready for Service, which is up from 486k RFS on 30th Apr 2024).
Residential customers typically pay from £23 per month for a 100Mbps (symmetric) package and this rises up to £32 for their top 900Mbps tier on a 24-month term, which includes a router and free installation.
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Ian Kock, Brsk’s Chief Operating Officer, said:
“Quite frankly, we think it’s criminal that so many residents have had to suffer with slow, expensive broadband for so long. Not to mention, the extremely poor customer service that comes with it. Luckily, we’re on the case. We look forward to bringing broadband the way it should be experienced. Fast, affordable and fair – nothing less.”
In terms of local gigabit-capable competition. Openreach’s new FTTP network already covers most of St Helens and a little bit of Ashton, while Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) is widely available across both locations, except for a sizeable business park or two. As for altnets, the only other provider with any presence is Grain in a patch of St Helens. CityFibre began working in the same location during 2022, but so far we’ve yet to see much live coverage.
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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In his recent address to Connected North Richard Tang said that Netomnia & Brsk were looking at a possible merger. Is there any further information about that?
Enjoy the mess of poles and wires they leave in their wake! They refuse to use existing ducts.
Could you specify where they refused, from what I’ve seen the main issue is the only ducts are owned by virgin and thus inaccessible.
Happy to be proven wrong.
They (BRSK) totally ignore local residents views and plant a ridiculous number of horrendous poles everywhere even when there are underground ducts already in place. They go for the cheap option every time and reported speeds and service are anecdotally never achieved.
Wasn’t the case for me, they’ve been nothing but curious, used existing infrastructure since it was openreach and accessible.
I also achieved all advertised speed which is doubly impressive given the symmetrical offering.
They’ve already been and gone. In response to their COO, I think it’s criminal that they cherry-picked the main roads, leaving all the secondary roads untouched.