Grain Add Sheffield to UK Full Fibre Broadband Network Expansion

Carlisle-based alternative broadband ISP Grain, which has so far built their point-to-point full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 270,000 UK premises (aiming for 600,000 in the future) and in 2025 secured a £225m funding boost (here), has issued a brief announcement to confirm that the South Yorkshire (England) city of Sheffield will be the next to get their network.

The choice of adding Sheffield, which is home to around 560,000 people, is an interesting one because the city already has a fair bit of access to gigabit-capable broadband networks by Openreach (BT), Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) and CityFibre (although CF only covers around half of it). After that there’s some modest to smaller coverage from FullFibre Ltd (Zzoomm), Hyperoptic, ITS Technology, Pine Media and even some recent build from little-known Giggle Fibre (Giggle remains odd as they’ve still not put any services live after several years of building).

As usual, Grain hasn’t revealed precisely how many premises they intend to cover in the city or when their build will complete, although they do confirm that the “build begins soon, with first customers going live next year“. We’re actually a little surprised that the first customers won’t go live until next year, as it usually only takes Grain a month or two to start putting the first connections live after the build starts.

Less of a surprise is the fact that, according to local street works data, their initial deployment focus will be around the Western side of the city in the Crookes area. This part of the city doesn’t have so many altnets to worry about, with Grain’s main competitors being the established players of Openreach and Virgin Media. Grain will no doubt be hoping that their lower cost approach to build and cheaper consumer pricing can disrupt the area in their favour.