back to article Community Fibre wins £18m from UK.gov infrastructure fund

Community Fibre has won £18m from the UK government's broadband fund – the first outfit to do so since the cash pot was announced back in 2016. The firm said that following the cash injection, it expects to roll out fibre speeds to 100,000 homes across London in the next 12 months, and to more than 500,000 premises in the …

  1. Carl Thomas

    Fibre to the Press Release

    Virgin Media's parent claim to have networks supporting 1Gb, per their 'Gigaworld' Fibre to the Press Release rollout of 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzBrAdafe58 however there's litlte sign of any interest in deploying such technologies any time soon.

    It's perfectly possible that Comcast will have 54.3 million premises able to order gigabit cable services before Virgin Media have any homes passed by it.

    Hopefully more competition from FTTP will provide them some incentive to get their backsides into gear and make the relatively modest investment to get DOCSIS 3.1 out there. They're just doing standard operating procedure for UK businesses and investing the bare minimum possible.

    1. annodomini2

      Complimentary Discworld reference

      "The aim of business is not to provide the best service, but the ONLY service!"

    2. Korev Silver badge

      Re: Fibre to the Press Release

      Here in Switzerland UPC (same company as UPC) currently offer up to 500/50Mbs. Some of the FTTP products are now offering up to 10Gbs(!)*; it's going to be interesting to see how they respond.

      I guess if BT pull their finger out in the UK, Virgin might have to start raising speeds to compete.

      *I can't see how any home user would require or be able to use this at the moment. For a business doing something like graphic design it could be very handy though.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fibre to the Press Release

        I guess if BT pull their finger out in the UK, Virgin might have to start raising speeds to compete.

        They already have, but in the least ambitious way they possibly could. BT announced up to 330 Mbps via G.fast, VM have increased their highest speed to 350 Mbps. But that isn't universally available, and I'm guessing is targeted on the known and expected footprint of G.fast.

  2. TRT Silver badge

    London...

    The one place where the investment generally wouldn't be needed because the upgrade is likely to quickly become self-financing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: London...

      "The one place where the investment generally wouldn't be needed because the upgrade is likely to quickly become self-financing."

      Actually you would be surprised. The BT Tower is literally at the end of my street and we have no fibre deployed anywhere near us by BT, with anyone wanting more than ADSL2 needing to go over to Virgin. Sadly Virgin has largely treated our area poorly (being the monopoly) with many of the local nodes well oversubscribed causing congestion, especially in the evenings.

      Last time I wrote to the BT Chairman to find out what happened with our supposed FTTP rollout (the leaked original plan was for sometime around 2013), I was told that in order to get fibre to our area, we should apply to the rural broadband fund. Needless to say I have left a copy of the letter whenever I require a good laugh. The end result is that central London areas are poorly served by providers. BT is simply not interested, which then means we can't even go to a provider who uses BT copper/fibre. Virgin whilst thankfully has improved in the last few months (and we are literally talking only a few months) after years of the network constantly going down due to poor signal levels and noise added to the local network nodes being oversubscribed. Virgin therefore acts as a monopoly which means generally the service is poor as you have nowhere to run. Relish broadband is available in our area, but as anyone in Central London knows, their service is poor at best (which is a real shame).

      With the above in mind, having a real fibre option would be nice to see.

      1. wyatt

        Re: London...

        Likewise here in Birmingham. My exchange isn't going to have FTTC rolled out by BT any time soon. They've also said that 'rural payment schemes' may assist with this.

  3. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Misuse of funds?

    *If* it was discovered that "rural broadband fund" cash was indeed being redirected from its intended targets and allocated to highly urban projects I would expect MPs, and fund auditors to squirm ...

    The fact that the BT chief is even suggesting that application to the fund for a central London location infers that there is a belief that funds may indeed be allocated ...

    NOA contact anyone?

  4. EnviableOne

    if the fixed line operators dont sort their lives out soon the mobile operators will take all their business.

    the average 4G speeds in the UK are 20Mbps down / 10Mbps up and if they can add more spectrum with LTE+ this is showing in current areas at 42/20 which is as faster than FTTC (infinity1) (38/10)

    and if they can use the FTTC infrastructure to do fibre backhaul, they could get 5G going too.

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