Despite last year’s concerns over redundancies (here), network provider County Broadband has today announced the completion of their work to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the Suffolk market town of Sudbury, which is home to a population of around 13,000.
The full fibre provider, which has been supported by an investment of £146m from Aviva Investors (here), is currently deploying their new FTTP network across rural parts of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk in England (i.e. they’ve been building to over 250 villages).
One of CB’s biggest individual builds, across the town of Sudbury, first began all the way back in October 2021 (here) and was a demand-led project (i.e. CB may have only been able to proceed once enough locals had expressed an interest). In total, 75% of Sudbury’s approximate 8,000 homes, businesses and community venues were earmarked for the rollout.
According to today’s announcement, the operator has now “completed building its gigabit-speed full fibre infrastructure in Sudbury“. The operator adds that a total of approximately 6,200 premises have been “connected” to the FTTP infrastructure as part of the multi-million-pound infrastructure build work across the historic market town. But we suspect they mean covered, rather than connected.
James Salmon, Director of Corporate Development at County Broadband, said:
“We are pleased to complete our full fibre network build in the historic Suffolk market town of Sudbury which will benefit from the unrivalled network reliability and significantly faster gigabit speeds that the new infrastructure provides.
As a community provider that prides itself on its commitment to engage closely with local leaders, residents and businesses across our network, we are also pleased to be working with local sports clubs and the town council on upcoming exciting events. This vital community engagement will enable us to continue to provide on-the-ground support where it’s needed across the town.”
Customers of the service typically pay from £35.99 per month (reduced from £42.99) for an unlimited symmetric speed 100Mbps package with a bundled wireless router on a 24-month term, which rises to £54.99 for 900Mbps (reduced from £84.99).
However, it’s worth noting that Openreach also has extensive FTTP coverage in the town, while Lit Fibre, which is currently being consolidated into CityFibre’s national UK network, has also covered quite a few parts of Sudbury.