Toob Extend FTTP Broadband to Cambridge, Luton, and Leicester UK
Hampshire-based network builder and ISP toob, which is rolling out a gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) network across parts of South England, has expanded their availability to include the Bedfordshire town of Luton, as well as the cities of Cambridge (Cambridgeshire) and Leicester (Leicestershire). But this will be via their partnership with Cityfibre (not own build).
Just to recap. Toob is currently being financed through equity from funds managed and advised by the Amber Infrastructure Group, as well a huge amount of debt financing provided by Ares Management’s Infrastructure Debt (here). At the end of 2023 this mix of equity and debt reflected a total commitment of £395m.
However, as mentioned earlier, toob both builds their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure and holds a complementary network partnership with CityFibre to help expand their coverage (CF also gains reciprocal access to harness toob’s network). The announcement of an expansion into Cambridge, Luton, and Leicester thus reflects that partnership with CityFibre’s existing FTTP network, rather than their own build.
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Nick Parbutt, CEO of toob, said:
“I am delighted to bring toob’s full-fibre broadband service to the residents of Cambridge, Luton and Leicester. For too long customers have been taken for granted by their broadband suppliers, with poor service and above inflationary price increases.
toob is focused on what customers really need, fast, reliable broadband at an affordable price. toob’s service is delivered through our partnership with CityFibre using full-fibre technology, which is the most reliable technology available.
Customers will get the benefit of full-fibre broadband with speeds of 900Mbps for only £29 per month on an 18 month contract. Also, with our toob promise customers can be assured that there will be no in-contract price rises unlike many broadband suppliers.”
The announcement comes shortly after toob published their latest annual accounts to the end of 2023, which among other things revealed that they were aiming to “largely complete the current phase of expansion of its network to 300,000 premises … during 2024.” But it’s unclear whether this reflects their own network build or the combined reach with CityFibre’s availability.
Toob’s accounts also reported an operating loss of £19.48m (2022: £13.57m), capex of £38.68m (2022: £26.39m), revenue of £5.5m (2022: £2.16m) and total liabilities of £214.7m (2022: £139.6m).
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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I’m not understanding why Toob would just select a few random towns to deploy on the CF network. They are holding themselves back from potential sales.
Surely they would be better taking the CF national product and selling everywhere?
I’m pretty sure not all CF areas are available to all ISPs. My understanding is that some areas have exclusive agreements (with Talk Talk maybe ?).
CF National is more expensive than connecting at each PoP. CityFibre want paying for collecting all the traffic together nationally and delivering it across an NNI rather than straight out of a FEX. Presume Toob can’t reach £29 for a gig via National.
Good to see Luton on the map for FTTP as it’s barely available here despite Cityfibre being busy the last two years digging up random streets here and installing FTTP.
Hopefully they will prioritise existing streets that have overhead BT lines as as opposed to underground BT lines.
What an earth are they going to Cambridge for? It’s been built several times already with FTTP!! This overbuild is stupid. They are all going to go down the toilet soon. £29 for 900mbps is not sustainable.