Briant Broadband Bring 5Gbps Speeds to Own Network Around Worthing UK

Alternative network operator and UK ISP Briant Broadband has informed ISPreview that customers covered by their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network around the seaside town of Worthing (West Sussex, England), which now reaches 10,500 properties passed (and serviceable), can access symmetric speeds of up to 5,000Mbps (5Gbps).

Eagle-eyed readers may recall that we first wrote about Briant’s plans to deploy their own full fibre network all the way back in 2021 (here), although this effort was mostly focused upon Sussex and, for the rest of the UK, they’ve tended to harness CityFibre’s much larger network.

However, despite keeping somewhat of a low profile, Briant Broadband hasn’t been standing still and have been slowly building across parts of Worthing and surrounding areas by running new fibre via Openreach’s existing cable ducts and poles (PIA). “We [now] have 10,500 properties passed (and serviceable) and 35km of fibre in the ground,” said one of Briant’s Directors, Gavin Cox to ISPreview.

The operator’s own-built fibre tends to run across parts of Lancing to Rustington and the good news is that they’ve just made symmetric speeds of up to 5Gbps available via this infrastructure, albeit currently only available to business users (residential areas can get speeds of up to 2.5Gbps – mix of on-net and CityFibre off-net). The top 5Gbps tier will set businesses back £121.45 +vat on a 12-month term, including free installation and a WiFi 6 router.

As for local homes, broadband packages seem to cost from £29.99 inc. VAT for symmetric speeds of 150Mbps on a 24-month term, which rises up to just £49.99 for their top 2.5Gbps tier. The fastest tiers also attract a one-off installation fee of £40 (free on slower packages) and all packages include a WiFi 6 router. Briant charges the same both on-net and off-net.

“It’s been a slog and we have in some cases learnt the hard way, but slowly and surely we have built a nice network down here,” said Gavin. Briant may be one of the smallest altnets in this field, but they’ve clearly made some good progress and it’ll be interesting to see how that evolves over the next few years.