Alternative broadband ISP and network builder Grain (Grain Connect) claims to have broken their previous home installation record of 36 minutes (here). The event occurred yesterday after a new customer signed-up and had a brand-new Full Fibre (FTTP) broadband service installed into their home in just 29 minutes.
The operator’s full fibre network currently covers 220,000 premises (21st May 2024) across parts of 59 UK locations (and over 150 new build housing developments), which includes a lot of small-to-modest sized patches of various urban areas like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Newport, Sunderland, Bolton, Blackburn and so forth. The operator also has 30,000 customers.
However, in terms of installation times, it’s worth remembering that there can be many different variables to consider depending upon the state of the local network, which makes it difficult to do a general comparison between operators. For example, some homes that have ONTs (optical modems) pre-installed for the same network could technically be remotely provisioned in seconds. But in reality it would still take slightly longer as you also have to boot the customer’s router up to establish a live link and WiFi etc.
Suffice to say, it’s important to give some context to Grain’s previous installation and their latest personal record. The 36 minute (original) installation was for one of their urban premises (a house, not a flat), where they had no infrastructure already in place inside the customer’s property (only outside in the street). The 36 minutes thus covered the following process:
1. The customer calling into our sales team, selecting their package and completing the order.
2. Creation of a work pack that was issued to an engineer.
3. Engineer attending the customer’s home and bringing a new fibre line into their home, terminating the fibre in the home and connecting up the router.
4. Connecting the broadband line to a port in our electronics and configuring the broadband service on the router.
5. Engineer testing the customer connection to ensure the service is working.
6. Tidying up and leaving the customer premises with a brand new working full fibre broadband service.
Doing all that in just 36 minutes really does require the most ideal of circumstances and we should point out that Grain also has a different definition of ‘Ready for Service’ (RFS) from some other operators. For example, Openreach and some other PIA based providers define a home RFS where they have a live service either in a chamber or at the top of the pole somewhere near the premise, which can sometimes be over 100 metres away.
By comparison, Grain define a home RFS when they have a live network to the boundary of the premise. It costs Grain about £200 to connect customers in a property (including the costs of marketing to acquire the customer and the in-home router), which compares with c.£300 for Openreach (excluding marketing and an in-home router).
So, with all that in mind, it’s interesting to note how Grain has just informed ISPreview that they’ve managed to beat their previous time and deliver a new service within just 29 minutes (it was the same type of install as the last one). The event took place in Oldham, where install engineer Samantha completed the install for new customer, Rebecca. The Grain sales, provisioning and technical support teams then facilitated the sign-up, scheduled the installation, and configured the router – going from sign-up at 16:40 to service activation at 17:09.
Richard Cameron, CEO of Grain, said:
“Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. For too long customers have endured long delays to have broadband installed in their homes. At Grain, we have chosen to build our own independent infrastructure, rather than renting the Openreach network. This enables us to deliver for our customers in a way no other provider can match. To do this in just 29 minutes is a testament to our efficient connection process and dedicated team.
While other providers deal in days or weeks, at Grain we deal in minutes.
We strive to deliver exceptional service, offering the lowest prices and the fastest installations, and I am extremely proud of the team for delivering this.”
The catch here is that, as good as this is, it won’t matter much unless you’re lucky enough to be in the minority of premises covered by Grain’s network. Most other network operators normally take several days (lead times of around 1-2 weeks are not uncommon) and of course Grain’s other installs will be slower than this (the operator notes that this will be a hard record for them to beat).