London-focused UK ISP CommunityFibre (CF), which aims to cover 2.2 million homes in the city with their 3Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network by the end of 2024, has today announced that they’ve increased their coverage to 500,000 homes and 116,000 businesses. Another £100m was also secured.
The provider, which also owns Box Broadband – covering parts of Surrey and West Sussex (here), started life a few years ago with an initial investment pot of around £90m from private investors (e.g. Amber Infrastructure and RPMI Railpen), including Government backed schemes. But this was boosted by £400m in 2020 thanks to global equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC and management group DTCP.
In support of its expansion plans, CF today claims to have secured an additional £100m facility from a syndicate of existing and new banks. The facility is said to have been significantly oversubscribed, although no further details were released on this as part of today’s announcement.
The operator added that it now has an extensive network with presence in 29 London boroughs, with immediate plans to add Haringey and Havering to the list (see below). It has also already connected and is providing free gigabit broadband to 300 community centres across London, with many more planned.
Graeme Oxby, CEO of Community Fibre, said:
“Bringing the best internet to our community has always been the focus of our business. With over 500k homes now able to connect we are well on our way to reaching our accelerated goal of reaching 2.2 million homes by the end of 2024. As an independent provider competing against larger incumbents, we know our goals are ambitious.
However, we have been working hard to ensure that all of London has access to a high quality, high speed, affordable broadband network. We believe that London should have the best possible infrastructure to support its future growth ambitions.”
New customers typically pay from £20 per month on a 24-month term (£27.50 post-contract) for their unlimited 75Mbps (symmetric speed) package with free setup and a free router, which rises to just £30 per month (£54 post-contract) for their 920Mbps service. A faster 3Gbps package also exists for those with deeper pockets.
Currently, the ISP operates in the following London boroughs: Barnet, Brent, Bexley, Bromley, Camden, City of London, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Richmond upon Thames, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth and Westminster.
“their 3Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband”. I am not exaggerating, I quite literally drooled when I read that. I wish other ISPs would go to that speed.
And you will use that speed for what hope you have a pc that can support more than a 1gbps eathernet port
2.5G is like almost standard on new mobo’s now 10G copper or SFP+ included on ASUS RT-AX89X new Router in more decent switches QSFP+ more common now too.
I was so tempted to upgrade to 3Gbit (currently on 1000/1000) after losing the backup Virgin Media connection I had since there’s no longer any need for it BUT while £99/m isn’t breaking the bank for me, it’s money. Each room in my house has single-mode fibre run to it terminated in an internal CSP, with most PCs having either in-built 10Gb networking or a 25Gb NIC installed so could def make use of it – however I’m certainly the minority having this kind of setup. Could be useful for people working with datasets in the 100s of GBs for work etc but even for the average prosumer… probs not worth it. Deciding to go for it or not is a good problem to have, though.
Community fibre is life in part of sutton, Surrey for private residential property’s. Specifically around sutton town centre.
My building is not Community Fibre but has Hyperoptic Im with Hyperoptic. 3gbps speeds is good most people wont even bother as the price is going to be an issue for most even in this high cost of living crisis.
Hyperoptic and Community Fibre two biggest Fibre networks in London are under cutting others who use Openreach network.
Its like how Mobile virtual networks are for example if there is a fault on sky broadband it might be openreach problem not directly sky.
And how much are you wasting on that speed
I’m hoping my area can be supported by 2024. I have only heard good things about CF.
Our landlord and Community Fibre already have wayleave agreements in place but they’re not looking to provide coverage yet. It doesn’t help my Landlord is the largest in the UK and the experience is pretty generic and minimal compared to other Landlords operating in the area.
Most of Tower Hamlets isn’t covered by the Openreach FTTP programme either.
Sky won’t offer me G.fast even though TalkTalk, BT (and EE) are willing to offer…
What’s slightly more unfortunate is that there’s been a waiting list for VDSL in my cabinet for a few months.
Nonetheless, it’s good to read CF is growing at pace.
Seems like CF have really ramped up their build over the last 6-12 months: the last figures I saw quoted (not by CF mind) was 307,000 premises passed from around November 2021. So more than a doubling.
Hyperoptic also seems to have increased their footprint substantially over the same period, from 620K to 825K.
Of the other London-centric AltNets, I wonder how G.Network are doing by comparison?
Symmetric 1000/1000 on CF is sweet, not to mention proper IPv6 support. Brings me joy seeing the HellermannTyton CSPs they use mounted on properties round here.
I am with CF (300 Mbps symmetrical). Their technical product is excellent but their ‘technical support’ is on par with Talktalk. They provided a Linksys Velop WHW0301 V2. Linksys has a poor record in providing firmware update- last update for the router was was Jul 21, 2021. Their support is based in the Philippines and their technical staff is truly clueless. The router’s firmware did not address the security vulnerability known as Fragment and Forge. After spending a considerable amount of time on te phone trying to get a fix, I gave up and installed- Openwrt router with Smart Queue Management and a couple of Openwrt dumb access points.
Fragment and Forge requires authenticated access to the WiFi network doesn’t it?
So far this the best available internet service provider.. I have from 6 Months and it’s same Upload and Download speed.
I’ve recently moved from VM to CF, the symmetrical speeds CF offers has solved a lot of the problems I had with Zoom calls and uploads. CF latency is very low while VM tends to be high which makes gaming impossible. I was with VM for over 20 years and I’m glad they no longer have my custom, I should have left them sooner.
I haven’t been viewing ISPreview for several months now!
But CommunityFibre still haven’t arrived in my building yet, 13 months since the wayleave agreement was signed!
I knew this was going to happen. When I said a few years ago that wayleave was only part of the story, I didn’t say it just out of frustration, I really meant it. Even after it is granted it takes at least 1-3 years before the service finally goes live. This has always been my observation having checked so many postcodes over the last few years.
This is exactly what has happened. They announced that within 6 months all main buildings of EastendHomes will be complete (as published here on ISPreview last year). Guess what? Less than half of them have went live 13 months later!
Yet their site will continue to say “Great news, we’re bringing full fibre broadband to you within the next few months.” Huh, more like next few years!
So while half a million homes has passed, the truth is that it is a total after 12 years since their incorporation. Their deployment is definitely slower than rival Altnets.
It’s pretty frustrating, I’m out of contract with TalkTalk paying them £40 a month for FTTC following their out of contract price hikes. I was waiting all this time to switch to CommunityFibre but they still won’t go live. Now I’m thinking that switching to a new FTTC provider may be needed. I just don’t see CommunityFibre going live for another 12 months.
CommunityFibre laid fibre down our street in Hackney a couple of months ago – had the “great news” on the address checker. Looked like it was all good to go, openreach even sprayed the fibre to premises points on the footpath. It’s now been downgraded to “not available in your area yet and customer service is estimating 6+ months. Painful!
About time they started doing Haringey, it’s been lagging behind other boroughs for fibre rollout.
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