As announced last week, Salisbury is set to become the first city/town in the UK to benefit from a complete full-fibre FTTP roll-out within just one year, by April 2020.
Openreach, the UK’s largest fibre provider, and a key network partner of Giganet, are committing to building out the infrastructure to around 60 premises on average per day for the next 12 months.
In total, over 20,000 homes and business will benefit from this £8m investment.
The roll-out is a huge undertaking, with some areas in the medieval cathedral city more complex than others with the build. In a number of areas, there could be collapsed or blocked ducts, and roads and pavements will need to be dug up to repair these. In other newer parts of the city, the roll-out could be more straight forward. However, no matter where the build is, this is going to be a big undertaking especially as they have committed to completing within one year.
Giganet is extremely well-placed, as we’re in the Openreach Salisbury exchange where the new full-fibre FTTP network is terminating. We have invested in our own dedicated equipment rack, and have connected this back to our resilient London-core network and have a number of FTTP customers already live.
So we have direct access onto this new fibre network, the best pricing, the highest levels of information about the roll-out, and the ability for us to directly control the networking traffic and create innovative products for homes and businesses. Yes, you can purchase a service from another Openreach communications provider (CP), but Giganet is the only local ISP to have this direct access onto the network to offer the full-fibre services.
Salisbury FTTP rollout schedule
Giganet have confirmed with senior managers at the Openreach full-fibre consultation event held in Marble Arch, London on 25/03/19, that they will shortly release 6-monthly plans of where their build is being targeted, with estimated go-live dates for each premises to benefit from the full-fibre FTTP rollout.
Giganet will be making this information available under a dedicated Salisbury FTTP build page, and also by creating various ‘District’ pages for each major street, area, business park, housing estate within the city of Salisbury that will benefit from the full-fibre broadband rollout.
Setting expectations
This full-fibre build is likely to be complex, there will be blocked and collapsed ducts, and so the build may be delayed. Dates may be missed. We are relying on many factors to be able to provide services to homes and businesses, but we’ll provide as much information as we know on our website and our dedicated Salisbury full-fibre build page.
Live real-time checker
Our website features a real-time broadband availability checker where you can enter your postcode and select your address to check instantly what services and speeds you can get today. This is a live-check, and will definitively confirm whether you can receive our Local UltraBEAM FTTP services today, or our hybrid fibre SuperBOLT FTTC services.
For business customers, we also provide our Local ELITE fibre leased lines services, availability and pricing.
This is a live checker – the speeds for our broadband services are accurate based on your location – the prices are valid – if the service is returned, you can get this today.
The availability checker is shown at the top of the page on all our website pages.
Flyers and local Salisbury events will reveal more info ‘offline’
Not everyone will be aware of Giganet or our website, social media and online communications, so we will be stepping up our local on-the-ground marketing to make sure that businesses and homes know about the exciting full-fibre FTTP plans for Salisbury. This will especially be the case for areas that are highlighted for build within the next 3-6 months, and areas already live and able to receive the service.
Partners & Local Champions
We really want to work with local partners and ‘champions’ who can make sure that the take-up and benefits of the full-fibre FTTP rollout in Salisbury are realised. We’d love to work with local IT companies, telecom resellers, members of the City Council, community groups and more to make this a highly successful campaign.
Let us all show Openreach and other fibre infrastructure providers that if they build the network, and invest in this long-term plan, that the community and businesses will embrace it so that others across the UK may benefit.
Do get in touch if you’d like to learn more or help out.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this is a highly ambitious project for Openreach, and the first of its kind in the UK, so it’s likely that things may not go quite according to plan with the timeframes and other details. We are too early into the process to know what challenges we’re yet to face (Openreach mainly), but you’ll quickly see from Giganet that we’re not ones to hide, manipulate, shirk our duties to provide the best services to future customers and information on this great project for Salisbury.
Matthew Skipsey, Technical Director and Head of Giganet
