Rural UK ISP Wessex Internet Builds Gigabit Broadband to 30,000 Premises

Broadband ISP Wessex Internet, which is building a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across rural parts of Southern England, has today – for the first time – announced that they’ve just connected their 10,000th customer and their gigabit network has covered 30,000 properties (Ready for Service).

The provider now says that they’re on track for 60% customer growth this year, which isn’t all that surprising when you consider how many major Project Gigabit build contracts they’ve secured over the last couple of years (i.e. a total of four contracts worth £71m to deliver full fibre broadband to over 53,000 properties in the next four years).

The company has taken a record-breaking 5,000 orders in the year to date and is now regularly installing 500 new customers each month, which for a smaller altnet is quite a good achievement at this stage. Speaking of which, the lucky 10,000th customer, Dan Phillips from Bisterne (Hampshire), won 10 years’ free gigabit broadband as part of the company’s celebrations (pictured – top).

Hector Gibson Fleming, CEO of Wessex Internet, said:

“We’re thrilled to welcome our 10,000th customer to Wessex Internet. We are passionately focussed on expanding our services to places where we deliver real social value, and working with our Project Gigabit contracts is enabling us to do that faster and more consistently than ever before. Our continuing trend of a 30% network wide take-up proves that our targeted strategy is paying off.

We’ve never aimed to be the biggest business in the industry, but we understand our rural niche and 2024 has been an incredible year so far. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of everyone in our team we are installing more customers than ever before. Having hit this milestone, we’re now just looking forward to the next 10,000!”

Prices for their full fibre packages start at £29 per month for a 100Mbps (15Mbps upload) tier on a 12-month term, but this only comes with a meagre 100GB data allowance (£44 for unlimited), and you’ll have to pay £49 (one-off) for activation. By comparison, their top unlimited usage plan will give 900Mbps (450Mbps upload) for £79 per month. Not cheap, but then they’re often the only FTTP choice in a lot of their locations (rural areas cost more to serve).