County Broadband ISP Customers Set for UK Migration to Truespeed
Customers of alternative rural full fibre broadband ISP County Broadband are to be migrated to the Truespeed brand over the next few months. The move follows last year’s merger of the two altnets (here), which at the time created a single operator covering 177,000 premises (RFS) and 40,000 customers. Since then Truespeed has also merged with Freedom Fibre (here), but that’s another story.
In case anybody has forgotten, the County Broadband side of the merged network had previously built their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure across rural parts of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk in England (c.250 villages). But until now it wasn’t clear precisely what would happen to CB’s base of retail customers post-merger, although they did initially pledge to continue trading under their own names for the “immediate future“.
Since then, new customers joining County Broadband in East Anglia have benefitted from a few improvements, such as a new WiFi 6 router, as well as further investment into their network and customer service quality. But Truespeed (officially known as the ‘Freedom Truespeed Group‘) has now decided to move on from County Broadband’s brand.
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ISPreview understands that County Broadband customers will, over the next few months (June to August 2026), be gradually migrated to Truespeed’s systems, resulting in a combined customer base of over 43,000 Truespeed customers in the South West and East, operating under a single brand (this figure excludes Freedom Fibre’s base, which is split across multiple ISPs via a wholesale-only network).
The information indicates that the services, pricing, contract terms, and service conditions of these customers will remain unchanged, and customers need not take any action during this migration. But customers of CB can still expect the branding/logos on their invoices and account pages to change to Truespeed, starting on the next billing cycle after their migration date. Customers will be emailed once the migration has completed to confirm they’re now on Truespeed and provide additional details.
Otherwise, it doesn’t appear as if existing CB customers need to do anything and their service should not be interrupted during the change.
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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Is there a strategic plan to migrate any Country broadband customers using FWA (a big part of the country broadband offer initially) to FTTP?
Have they not already migrated FWA customers at premises where they can provide FTTP?
Where they can’t already provide FTTP, it’s unlikely they ever will. County Broadband, Truespeed and Freedom Fibre all wrote off huge debts. The merged group now claims to be virtually unlevered, and emphasises its capital efficiency and financial strength. It’s safe to assume they will not borrow more money to expand FTTP coverage in FWA areas, even if they could find a willing lender.