Voneus to Expand Gigabit Broadband in Carmarthenshire via Street Lights
The Carmarthenshire County Council (CCC) in Wales has signed a new agreement that will allow rural ISP Voneus to install their fixed wireless gigabit broadband network equipment on top of local street lighting columns, which will make it easier for them to expand into the county’s poorly served rural communities.
The announcement notes that the provider will use this to send its wireless signal from “column to column … meaning long distances can be traveled into more rural areas“. This will almost certainly adopt the same approach as we’ve seen elsewhere (here), which involved the use of Cambium Networks’ 60GHz cnWave (Terragraph) wireless network technology.
At present there are no details on the provider’s future roll-out plan for the county and so it’s difficult to know how many premises will benefit from this agreement or where, although it’s worth noting that Openreach’s full fibre (FTTP) lines have already reached around two thirds of the entire county. But Voneus’ wireless network doesn’t require masses of new trenching, making it fairly quick and less disruptive to deploy.
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Customers of the new wireless network can currently expect to pay from £25.99 per month (normally £38.99) for symmetric speeds of 250Mbps (inc. free router and installation) on a 24-month minimum term, which rises to £49.99 for 900Mbps (normally £74.99). The first month of service is also being offered for free.
Ilan Scorah, Director of Strategy and Planning at Voneus, said:
“Our partnership with Carmarthenshire County Council is another significant milestone for Voneus helping broadband connectivity in rural Carmarthenshire, where connectivity has often been a challenge. Strengthening our partnerships with local authorities helps lead the way for better digital access which we know can make a substantial difference in fostering economic growth, enhancing educational opportunities, and improving overall quality of life.”
Cllr Hazel Evans said:
“I am thrilled to have this new agreement with Voneus in place. It’s a positive step towards bridging the digital divide in the harder to reach rural areas of the county. Building working relationships to better the services of residents and businesses in Carmarthenshire is integral to the region and I hope that we can continue to collaborate with providers to improve broadband connectivity in our rural communities.”
However, it’s worth noting that Voneus are currently going through a bit of a difficult period, which this month saw them drop out of the Government’s £12m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contract for Mid West Shropshire (here) and suffer a spate of complaints about their legacy network (here). But the operator has still been pulling in tens of millions in fresh investment from Global Connectivity PLC via Rural Broadband Solutions Holdings Limited (RBSHL).
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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This should tell you everything you need to know about this company.
They’re putting their long suffering customers second to acquisition using cheap tech to expand in a desperate grab to increase revenue.
They’ll be long gone to see the shortfall on medium and long term acquisition when BT (maybe Ogi) inevitably overbuild it.
Openreach already covers 64% of the county, including the relatively rural area that I live in.
Taking over naff equipment from a Company that failed (you have to wonder why it failed – possibly because they used naff equipment ?) your going to get some flack until it is upgraded. As for dropping out of a Project Gigabit build – we can only presume financially it didn’t work. Regarding this scenario if FTTP was available it would be a non starter. So presumably there is a perceived issue with installing there. Living in a street avoided by OpenReach I’d have jumped at the chance of upgrading from a poor FTTC service via radio.
If you buy “naff” networks and bid for projects without properly assessing them then you are signalling to the market that you are incompetent.
That area will have fibre before the network has paid for itself.
Approach makes sense from an economic point of view vs a costly fibre deployment. However, there are a couple of issues that merit further consideration. If this is based on a mesh network approach it may prove complex to manage and maintain in the long run. With Cambium Networks technology supplier of CnWave at 60GHz mentioned in the article facing financial troubles and breaching its covenants with lenders only adding to these worries. Unless the area is ‘direct bury’ for Openreach and there is no PIA option, they may well get overbuild by Openreach, Ogi or others and wireless may be perceived the less desirable / reliable option at that point.
Good Santa a top idea to use lamp posts that are already there. Many object to excessive posts in general. If wireless includes 5g, then I don’t see the problem, in my several years experience, it is likely to be unuseable for about one day per year. The experience of a real customer would be helpful