Full fibre ISP Community Fibre has now linked 100,000 London properties, most of them on social housing estates, to gigabit broadband.
Community Fibre has achieved its quick full fibre rollout through deals with the city’s largest landlords, including local authorities, housing associations and private owners.
84% of the properties Community Fibre has connected are socially owned. Deals with Wandsworth Council have seen 70% of the borough’s social housing properties connected, while 57% of council-owned properties in Southwark are linked up.
Overall, 16 of London’s 33 boroughs have Community Fibre-enabled social housing.
The ISP has plans in place to connect an additional London 270,000 properties, through 40 large landlords. It’s ultimately aiming reach 500,000 premises by the end of 2022, backed by a £90 million fund, from private investors and government-backed schemes.
Community Fibre offers connected homes broadband speeds up to 1Gbps, while 40,000 connected businesses can subscribe to speeds of up to 10Gbps.
Packages start at £20 a month for connections with symmetrical (download and upload) speeds of 50Mbps, and run up to £50 a month, for connections with average speeds of 920Mbps.
Graeme Oxby, CEO of Community Fibre, said: “We are tremendously proud to be bringing in the New Year having enabled 100,000 households, the majority of which are social housing properties. These homes are just some of the victims of the national digital divide.
“Several of London’s largest landlords now have more than a third of their properties connected to full-fibre internet speeds and with Community Fibre, London’s landlords can now, at no cost to themselves, increase this figure whilst supporting the UK’s broadband ambition to reach its target of bringing fast, reliable and secure broadband to the UK as soon as possible.
“Our mission is to bring faster and cheaper broadband to Londoners and especially to those that would benefit the most from it, by working with councils, housing associations and private landlords. We passionately believe in engaging with the local community; we actively look to recruit locally, we offer residents digital skills training and provide free WiFi broadband in local community centres to have a positive social impact.”
Currently just 13% of London properties can access full fibre broadband, just above the national coverage of 10%. The capital is lagging behind other cities, including Hull, where KCOM’s Lightstream rollout has achieved nearly universal full fibre coverage, and Belfast, York, Salford and Milton-Keynes, where more than half properties can access FTTP.
In October Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a £10 million project to use London Underground tunnels and public buildings to boost the city’s fibre connectivity, with the aim of linking up an additional 400,000 homes.
