Grain Expands FTTP Broadband Network Cover to 270,000 UK Premises
Carlisle-based alternative network operator and ISP Grain (Grain Connect), which a week ago secured a major £225m funding boost (here), on Friday revealed that their gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband network had now covered 270,000 UK premises (up from 250k in March 2025) – from Aberdeen to Brighton, Carlisle to Cornwall, Leicester to Liverpool and Newcastle to Newport etc.
The operator’s broadband network, which is also home to over 43,000 customers (end of March 2025), is now aiming to build toward its next target of around 600,000 premises – it’s not currently known when this might be achieved. After that there’s also an aspiration toward reaching 1 million premises. Grain has no plans for M&A and so this will all come from fresh infrastructure build.
So far this year we’ve only seen a few big announcements of fresh funding from the altnet sector, with some of the main headliners being CityFibre’s massive £2.3bn deal (here), Netomnia’s £160m boost (here) and Wessex Internet’s £50m funding deal (here). Elsewhere in the market many other players are back to focusing more on growing take-up than new network build, while at the same time seeking a good outcome from consolidation in the future.
Advertisement
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.
As a grain customer for almost 2 years now it is good to see that they are still expanding but if they want to stay competitive they are going to have to sort out the ipv6 problem (aka lack of), highish pings (i often get around 20-25), advertising things on the website that don’t exist (the online customer portal which has been “coming soon” for 3 years now apparently) and lastly the fact that the 1gig (900 average) seems capped to 750.
With the amount of competition now just having good prices is not really good enough.
I’ve been with them since August 22 and you’re absolutely right, when they first came here it was virgin only but now we have CF available so now I’m considering switching although at £30 pm with a static ip I can’t complain about the price, speeds for me are 800-850 so again that’s ok and all my network gear is capped at 1gig anyway but the option should be available for higher speeds now.
TBB maps show just a few roads in many places. Is there a strategy? They started here a few years ago, dug a few roads, but not showing live. Now the area is being covered by Openreach, Nextfibre and CityFibre.
Well they did the terrace but not the semi’s on the end on our street, we still got the advertising about how minor disruption for all the fast internets though! Yes we bothered to express interest but obviously not worth while for them to dig a few m more trench. If they want to return and fill in….still waiting for BTOR or anyone else.