Toob Extend Cheap Gigabit Broadband to 23 New UK Locations
Hampshire-based ISP toob, which has deployed their own gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband network across parts of Southern England, have today announced that they’ve expanded the availability of their services – under their complementary partnership with CityFibre – to another 23 cities and towns across the UK.
The alternative network provider is currently being financed through equity from funds managed and advised by the Amber Infrastructure Group, as well as a large 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, toob both builds their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure and also holds a network partnership with CityFibre, with the latter helping to expand their coverage well beyond what they’ve already built (CF also gained reciprocal access to toob’s network). As a result of today’s development, toob’s packages can now be purchased in many towns and cities across a total of 23 additional UK locations.
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The latest additions to their coverage include Bath, Radstock, Gloucester, Cheltenham & Charlton Kings, Redditch, Evesham, Wolverhampton, Swindon, Chippenham, Warminster, Melksham, Westbury, Chelmsford, Solihull & Yardley, Sutton Coldfield, Erdington & Old Oscott, Harpenden, Newark on Trent, Hinckley, Bishop’s Stortford, Welwyn Garden City, Potters Bar, St Albans, and Watford.
Nick Parbutt, toob CEO, said:
“For far too long, broadband providers have let customers down with poor service and unjustified price hikes. At toob, we’re changing that by focusing on what truly matters—offering fast and reliable broadband at an affordable price.
With ultrafast speeds of 900 Mbps priced currently at just £25 a month, we’re delivering incredible value. This is all made possible through our partnership with CityFibre which uses the latest and most dependable full-fibre technology available.”
Customers of the service currently pay just £25 per month on an 18-month minimum contract term (or £37 if you want a monthly term) to receive symmetric speeds of 900Mbps+ (average advertised speed) from toob, which includes free installation, a wireless router, unlimited usage, a pledge of no mid-contract price hikes and UK-based support.
In addition, it’s worth mentioning that toob also offers a cheaper 150Mbps entry-level tier for just £22 per month on an 18-month term, as well as a separate 50Mbps Social Tariff (‘toob essentials’) for those on state benefits. The latter has no fixed contract term and costs just £20 per month.
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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Gosh, those of us still in the copper world dream of such things. 3x the speed for half the price! But for now, the wait goes on, and on, and on…
Same here. Stuck on FTTC and will probably be for another 3 or 4 years while almost everyone else has a choice of 3 or 4 full fibre providers and speeds up to 10 Gbps. And I live in an urban area. Sigh.
Decent looking offering, shame that getting away from CGNAT is a £8/month addition though. A touch on the high side.
Agreed. I thought Netomnia / YouFibre were bad enough at £5. Mots customers would be happy with dynamic IPv4 address, or routable ipv6. I don’t see why people should pay a lot for a static IP as it’s not the customer’s fault they can’t do basic dynamic IP. It’s quite a chunk on the bill compared to the broadband part. At most it should be £3 per month if my view.
The ISP doesn’t really save anything by providing a dynamic IP since they still need one per customer, by having a charge for a static IP at least they are providing some value in exchange for the fee. Though with RIPE IPs in a /24 block selling for around $35/each you could put a mere £2 onto the service price and you’ve paid for the address after an 18-month contract. I think a lot of these providers use the static IP price as a way of covering off what are likely to be high-usage customers which then allows them to sell the CGNAT service at a lower cost than they might otherwise pick.
Pain, so close yet so far. Stuck with copper and it’s choking.
If install is free why is monthly a 50% premium? Monthly customers dont have 50% higher operational costs to serve.
They probably have at least 50% higher costs in the first month compared to all the other months in a contract period – you need to acquire the customer, build their service, place an order with CityFibre, and supply a router. I’d be surprised if break-even happened before the fourth month if the install involved a fibre installation appointment.
£37 with no installation charges for a rolling monthly 1Gb service is a good price.
Install is free to the customer. It’s rolled into the monthly subscription cost. Obviously the people doing the install and the equipment they use for the install need paying for.
There’s a capital cost to the isp of providing service. ISPs know that contracted customers will cover that cost during their initial contract. They have no such confidence with monthly paying customers and must attempt to recoup that cost further.
Fortunately it’s no compulsory to buy their service if you don’t like the price.
They also have recently gone live in my area of chatham and Gillingham.