Grain’s FTTP Broadband Network in Bury to Go Live in April 2025
Alternative UK network operator Grain (Grain Connect) has issued a progress update on their recently started roll-out of a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network in the Greater Manchester (England) town of Bury. The service is now set to start going live next month.
The local roll-out in the town, which vaguely aims to reach “thousands of homes and businesses” by an as yet unspecified completion date, began in February 2025 (here) and has been making quite rapid progress. Since then the operator appears to have been focusing most of its engineers on the east side of the town (just a bit outside the very centre), around and within the areas near to the Bond Street, B6221 and B6222 roads.
The expansion into Bury wasn’t totally unexpected, as Grain already have some nearby deployments in parts of Oldham, Bolton, Bradford, and Manchester itself. In terms of competitors, both Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) and Openreach already have wide coverage of a gigabit-capable broadband network in Bury. In addition, FullFibre Limited also has some coverage, albeit only in the North of the town.
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However, Netomnia’s (Brsk) engineers have also recently been spotted building down from the north side of the town and toward the centre, with their works appearing to be headed directly for the area where Grain is now actively building. Netomnia usually tries to avoid overbuilding other altnets, although there can sometimes be unavoidable overlaps when recent plans collide.
Otherwise, Grain’s full fibre network can now be found in parts of around 60 UK locations (plus over 150 new build housing developments), which includes a lot of small-to-modest sized patches of various urban cities and towns like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Hull, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and so forth.
“To celebrate our arrival, we’re offering an unbeatable broadband deal. Sign up early and get up to 6 months of Full Fibre for just £5.00, then enjoy prices from £19.99 per month for the rest of your fixed-price contract. Plus, with a free standard installation and our Price Freeze until 2027, there are no nasty surprises,” said Grain.
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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Grain is the one altnet I can’t take seriously. They build to parts of an area and it’s almost like a fear of commitment to finish a location, as if they’ve started the all you can eat buffet piling their plate high then noticing a dish they haven’t started before even taking a bite from what’s already on their plate. If they are going to build to an area, at least cover the vast majority before breaking ground in another location. Their service was also ridiculously locked down with users being unable to access their router even to change a WiFi password, I don’t know if this is still the case. CG-NAT with no IPv6. This is prime territory for an aggressive company takeover in the future.
We would of had Youfibre here if Grain didnt come here and do 20 roads. Nightmare of a ISP, totally useless.
This was in Netomnia plan for a long time ago, it is grain overbuilding on them
What matters is the build. Some networks have had places in build plans for a long time and nothing ever happened. Neither grain nor netomnia seem to be live in bury yet and both are now doing it at the same time.
Both Grain and Netomnia are overbuilding each other to the north and east of Bury. Neither seem to be touching anything west or south of the town. Most parts of Bury have Openreach FTTP and Virgin, so curious that two altnets are foucussing on the same patch. Does anyone have insight into how Netomnia and Grain have chosen to rollout only to this particular patch?
I wish someone reading this with any clout who they may listen to get them to implement IPv6. They offer CGNAT. It is a closed system they entirely manage with full control of every router. Therefore, it is absurd they still do not offer IPv6 in 2025
IPV6 is available upon request, just reach out to the support team.
I did, they said its not available.
Grain put in a cabinet with a combination lock 18 months ago in Weston-super-Mare with ducts in a few roads. Area has Virgin Media and Openreach now and maybe CityFibre some time.
They did two streets in Cardiff a while back and uptake is low maybe single digits and the reinstatement of the pavements have been horrendous. I’d be concerned for the investors.
Bury is getting a lot of coverage now it seems. That’s potentially 5 options including the “6G” jokers that shouldn’t be touched with a telegraph pole.