Northumberland UK ISP Alncom Builds Full Fibre into Alnwick

Rural UK ISP Alncom, which over the past few years has built a mix of fixed wireless and “full fibre” broadband networks, have now begun to build a new ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to reach the Northumberland market town of Alnwick.

The town itself is home to around 8,000 people and also happens to host Alncom‘s HQ building. Back in 2017 a joint effort by Openreach (BT) and the state aid supported iNorthumberland programme managed to extend a slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) based network across the community, but some premises will now also be gaining access to FTTP via Alncom.

According to ITV News, the project will take several weeks to complete and requires around 10km of new fibre cable to be laid. Approximately 100 properties are expected to benefit, which reflects only a small part of the town (we’re assuming some of these will be premises that missed out on FTTC in surrounding areas).

Most of the funding for this work will come from the Government’s gigabit broadband voucher scheme (i.e. up to £3,000 for individual homes and £7,000 for businesses – here), although some private investment from Alncom itself will also be used to help cover any shortfalls.

John Parker, Business Development Manager for Alncom, said:

“Within weeks, this ultrafast broadband will be on-line, making this corner of rural Northumberland one of the best-connected places in Britain.”

On the surface this may seem like a small deployment, although for an ISP of Alncom’s size it’s still one of the biggest projects that they have ever undertaken. The provider is also working to install similar FTTP networks in remote rural parts of Durham (example), as well as other locations in Northumberland.

Prices for their residential unlimited FTTP packages start at £29.99 inc. VAT for 30Mbps and go up to £69.99 for 100Mbps. The latter is quite pricey for a 100Mbps service today, but this perhaps reflects the high cost of rural deployments and their upkeep.