Numerous new full fiber broadband companies have been founded in the last few months, promising great speed improvements at aggressive prices. For more established competitors like BT, Virgin Media, Sky, and Plusnet, these sleek newbies can be difficult to find. But for those looking to improve their speeds or cut their bills that are not being served by the nationwide giants, these new options can be extremely attractive.
As companies across the UK try to upgrade broadband infrastructure, which is one of the worst in Europe – not to mention the world – here are three new kids-on-the-block that are either expanding rapidly or arriving soon come months. If you’re one of the millions struggling to work from home, study remotely, meet friends and family on a video call, or use the latest boxing set everyone is talking about on Netflix without taking an endless one Suffering from buffer animation, it might be worth checking out some of the new contests.
Firstly, Community Fiber already has pretty good brand awareness in the capital, as its service vehicles are regularly spotted out on the streets. The company recently announced that it had doubled the number of premises covered by its network last year to reach 200,000 homes across London. Community Fiber has not only expanded its infrastructure, but has also increased the number of customers in its books by 130 percent over the same period.
It’s not too surprising that Community Fiber is thriving. As more of us spend more time at home, the near-unrivaled 3 Gbps broadband option should guarantee you never have to wait for something to load again. By comparison, the current average speed for household broadband in the UK is 65Mbps. The maximum speed for Community Fiber, which is 3,000Mbps, is 4,500 percent faster.
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Netflix only needs 25 Mbit / s to stream its shows and films in the highest quality offered. In busy households, of course, few people are required to stream shows at the same time – or to try to back up their smartphone, download a new update, receive a video call, or update their computer too quickly at the same time. Fill a 65-Mbit / s connection and get stuck with the annoying st-st stutter. As new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and 8K video streams spread, a full fiber connection is likely to move from a luxury to a necessity.
Community Fiber may have reached a new milestone, but the company is far from finished. The company had previously announced that it would hit 1 million promises (mostly in London, but not all) with Gigabit-enabled full fiber connections by the end of 2023. The company will expand in parts of Barnet, Brent, Camden, City of, London, Croydon, Ealing, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Thames Richmond, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth and Westminster.
Community Fiber charges £ 25 a month for a 300Mbps connection, £ 35 a month for 800Mbps, £ 49 a month for 1Gbps, and a staggering £ 99 a month for future-proof 3Gbps To be honest, most people will be perfectly happy with either of the first two levels of subscription.
Another new company that aims to connect 1 million spaces by the end of 2023 is WeFibre. Unlike Community Fiber, based in London, WeFibre specializes in connecting rural communities. In its latest announcement, WeFibre confirmed plans to bring the full fiber infrastructure to nine areas in Cumbria and West Wales. Rural communities have not always benefited from the same improvements in densely populated areas like Manchester and London that WeFibre, which only launched in October 2020, is set to fix.
The nine new communities highlighted by WeFibre are Llanybydder, Hexham, Keswick, Cwrt-Newydd, Penrhiw-Buddy, Nantgaredig, New Inn Cross, Llanrhystud, Llanllwni, and Tan-y-Groes. This is in addition to the projects in Marsden, West Yorkshire, which will bring fiber-optic links into operation in 2,200 households by the end of this year. WeFibre is also committed to connecting 50,000 locations in Tameside, Greater Manchester and 100,000 in the Blackpool area by the end of 2022.
In addition to providing high-speed broadband connections, WeFibre also sells mesh network kits to customers using multiple nodes in their home to ensure that every nook and cranny is flooded with a strong Wi-Fi signal. While having a fiber optic cable to the door solves many problems at home at work, if you have a patchy Wi-Fi network at home, unfortunately, you won’t see the benefits of the 1 Gbps cable under your driveway.
WeFibre will offer 1 Gbps connections for £ 20 per month when it launches, the website promises.
After all, Gigaclear has slightly lower ambitions than the previous two newcomers and intends to cover 500,000 properties in the UK with its full fiber network by the end of 2023. This full fiber provider currently offers speeds of up to 1 Gbit / s for around 12,000 households and companies in the southwest. So far, Gigaclear has mainly focused on rural areas in Devon and Somerset.
Gigaclear General Manager of South West Jo Scarrott told the broadband blog ISPreview, “Our build time is shortening as we streamline our processes and invest heavily in the region. All of this contributes significantly to our development with a strong outlook. In addition, we are constantly developing and testing new technologies that enable us to provide our service more effectively and efficiently. We can also reach the most distant communities left alone by other providers. We always strive for improvement, of course, but thousands of residents in rural villages and market towns in the Southwest can now look forward to some of the fastest broadband speeds in the world. “
Like WeFibre, Gigaclear also offers a mesh network with some of its bundles. Unlike a traditional Wi-Fi extender, mesh networks don’t affect the speed of your wireless connection. It also means that you don’t have to dive into your smartphone or tablet’s settings menu to intentionally switch between the original Wi-Fi network and the separate amplified signal from the extender. Instead, the mesh network intelligently moves your devices between nodes based on which is providing the best signal, how many devices are connected to each node, and more.
Gigaclear charges £ 49 per month for speeds of 300Mbps on a Linksys powered mesh network. At speeds of 900 Mbps, that cost increases to £ 79 per month.
Of course, these three are only a fraction of the new Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that hit the market every month. The ongoing public health crisis has highlighted the problems with broadband infrastructure across the UK and has spurred a number of new companies to act – and started connecting households with future-proof gigabit-enabled cables.
Alongside these new competitors, more established ISPs such as BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk are working quickly to improve connections across the country.
