Voneus UK Bring Gigabit Wireless Broadband to Walney Island

Rural network builder and UK ISP Voneus, which aims to cover 370,000 premises via both their gigabit-capable fixed wireless access (FWA) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband networks, has announced that they’ve begun to build a new gigabit wireless network that will connect thousands of homes on Walney Island in the south of Cumbria.

The project, which has been in the works for a while, is getting underway in the North Scale area and the first customer installations are scheduled for the beginning of July 2024. Assuming all goes to plan then the build could eventually end up connecting around 4,700 homes, many of which currently lack access to gigabit-capable broadband speeds.

In partnership with the local authority, Voneus has selected lighting columns to deploy the network, which is capable of delivering up to 1 Gigabit speeds both upload and download by harnessing Cambium Networks 60GHz cnWave mesh network technology.

Customers of the new wireless network can expect to pay from £38.99 per month for symmetric speeds of 250Mbps (inc. free router and installation), which rises to £74.99 for 900Mbps. The first three months of service are being offered for free and the provider is pledging no mid-contract price rises on their 24-month term.

Voneus’ CEO, Christoper Traggio, said:

“Voneus is the vanguard of rural gigabit connectivity, deploying advanced wireless and fibre technology in a hybrid, complementary manner.

“Today marks another significant milestone on our mission to bring better broadband to the people of Walney Island. The community’s welcome has been uplifting and the response has been fantastic, with many residents registering already for our game-changing service. We can’t wait to start installing customers next month.”

The news comes just a day after we reported that the operator had benefitted from another investment boost of £18m (here) and appeared to be accelerating their plans.