Broadband ISP Grain to Expand UK Full Fibre Network into Cheshire Town
Alternative network operator Grain (Grain Connect), which has already built their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 220,000 UK premises RFS (21st May 2024) and connected 30,000 customers, has confirmed that their next expansion target is the industrial Cheshire town of Widnes.
The local roll-out is due to start this month and the first customers could then be connected by “early 2025“, although it’s currently unclear precisely how many premises in the town will be reached by this deployment or how long the build will take to complete. Interested customers can pre-register for the service, which will also offer a discounted 1Gbps package with 9 months half price (no payment will be taken until the service is fully set-up).
The operators full fibre network can currently also be found in parts of 59 UK locations (plus over 150 new build housing developments), which includes a lot of small-to-modest sized patches of various urban areas like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and so forth.
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Richard Cameron, CEO at Grain Broadband, said:
“We’re excited to offer Widnes residents an internet service that can keep up with their digital lives. We’re not just delivering faster internet; we are also saving customers a significant amount on their monthly broadband bill. Whether you’re streaming your favourite shows, working from home or gaming, we’re helping to build a more connected Widnes.”
Naturally, Grain won’t be the only gigabit-capable broadband network in a town the size of Widnes, which is already heavily covered by rival services from Virgin Media (nexfibre) and Openreach (BT).
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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“Naturally, Grain won’t be the only gigabit-capable broadband network in a town the size of Widnes, which is already heavily covered by rival services from Virgin Media (nexfibre) and Openreach (BT).”
Wholly unnecessary to add yet more infrastructure where it already exists.
Some of us like having the choice of something cheaper than what the two dominant operators can deliver. Oh and they do it all underground rather than using poles.
https://www.grainconnect.com/telegraph-poles-and-broadband/
Grain are good as they are one of the only ISPs that offer their service underground for FTTP. In my entire city we have Openreach, CityFibre and Nextfibre – all have gone overheard with poles in their deployment. Grain have installed everywhere underground. It’s just so much more cleaner and attractive proposition
also considerably more expensive and slower to deploy. If Openreach are overhead then I presume “Grain” had to dig their own ducts.
Is underground infrastructure this website’s new obsession? Symmetric speeds are old hat I guess.