The likes of BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone are going up against WightFibre as Openreach announces it is to roll out full fibre broadband to 45,000 homes and businesses across the Isle of Wight.
Ryde, Bembridge, Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor, Niton, Freshwater, Newport and Wootton Bridge will all benefit from the major £13.5million investment by the UK’s largest digital network provider. This is in addition to plans announced in 2020 for upgrading the broadband infrastructure in Cowes.
It means that full fibre broadband – with speeds around 10x greater than they are now – will be available across most of the Isle of Wight by December 2026. However, a map from Openreach shows that East Cowes will be completely missed out from the rollout, as will rural properties in the South and West Wight.
5 specialist engineers from the Chief Engineer’s team will be supervising the build in addition to further support from engineering partners and a dedicated civil engineering team based at Ryde. Openreach already employs 50 people on the Island.
What’s not clear at the moment is how the full fibre rollout will be achieved; whether it will mean more roadworks across the Island, or if ducting laid by WightFibre in recent months will be utilised. Openreach has been approached for further clarity.
Openreach says that it already has a significant existing network on the Island and that engineers will be using the latest technology, like tiny underground cameras that inspect ducts for blockages, to avoid digging up the streets. The company says that wherever possible they will make use of the existing network of underground ducts and poles to avoid roadworks and disturbance.
Connie Dixon, Openreach’s regional director for the South East, has said:
“Nobody in the UK is building Full Fibre faster, further or at a higher quality than Openreach. We’re passing more than 50,000 new homes and businesses every week and installing around 800 metres of cable every minute, with our teams of highly skilled engineers working alongside our build partners to deliver some of the fastest and most reliable broadband available anywhere in the world.
Article continues below this advertisement “We’ve already reached eight million homes and businesses across the UK with ultrafast Full Fibre technology including more than more than 800,000 across the region, but we know there’s more to do and we’re committed to doing it.”
UPDATE – It has been confirmed by Openreach that East Cowes will be included in the rollout, despite the inaccuracies of the map – which is to be updated shortly.
Yet again ,rural areas are ignored ,so much for levelling up .
You could always sell up and move to the town with noise, chavs, no parking, crime.
Guess some want it ‘all ways’
Wow if you wanna see a bunch of oldies moan about something that have no idea about/ couldn’t be ask to research just keep refreshing
Fibre over the pole. No digging up roads aka Wight Fibre style.
I’ve wondered why this was never done, rather than digging up every street? Maybe there’s a reason, does anyone know why they don’t utilise poles like the electricity cables do?
Poles should be outlawed
If we have a storm telephone and electricity will inconvenience consumers
They say it is full fibre but be careful it could be only to the street box and not to your to home
It’s because BT own that infrastructure. They own the poles and ducts so until recently when ofcom forced them to start selling access there was no other option. I believe they do use the BT ducts and poles where they can but it must not be cheap.
Ofcom says BT must give rivals access to its pole and duct networks (pinsentmasons.com)
Wait for driverless vehicles to then be utilised once full reliable 5g networks cover the Isle with booster fibre networks as back ups.
As the poorer car drivers are priced off the road, as project fear of climate change has failed to remove enough cars, then the poor will ditch cars and use driverless electric cabs, ordered and paid for by phone, given an entry code, and the cabs will have out of town electric charging areas to self charge with staff to oversea such.
Then the better classes will once again have roads without a thousand cars parked up all day to ease their driving experience.
Watch and see.
Wow, there really are some truly blind/ignorant people out there.You make a valid point, maybe in the wrong place. Yes, the enlightened among us can what is coming.
Which is exactly what should have been done in the first place – utilising existing ducks and pipes. Instead we’ve had years of chaos by itefibre digging up roads and pavements. I for one will be using this fibre when it’s available. I will never use itefibre.
Full fibre internet via ducks? Certainly a novel way to improve internet speeds. How will BT prevent said ducks from flying away to the mainland, taking the poor islanders’ network traffic with them?
Absolutely brilliant reply to Martin. Had me in stitches.
It does sound a bit quackers doesn’t it.
More likely to get ducks in a rural location than the 21st century services that we have to pay for regardless of our lack of access to them!
I think wight fibre will be for nothing, or they will sell out their infrastructure once they realise how fed up people are with them, hence the low uptake.
Low uptake? Where did you see that?
This is privatised madness. There is no justification for a duplicated full-fibre network except lip service to competition. Broadband should be a nationalised utility, as, of course, should water, power and gas. Now, that sounds familiar … Is somebody suggesting that privatising (ie giving away to one’s cronies and to foreigners) has somehow improved value or service level? No, thought not.
BT, Open Reach, Vodaphone, Sky andTalkTalk could have done it years ago as they have done in many parts of the country. None of them wanted to invest in upgrading the Isle of Wight’s broadband network. That is until Wightfibre put thier money where their mouth is and began the mammoth task of installing fibre optic cables to every home on the Island. Yes, the work has caused much disruption to our roads since they started, but like they say “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”.
A future take over of Wightfibre by one of the big boys? Watch this space!
Surely, you mean the Governments money aka OUR money ?
There hasn’t really been any national fibre roll out until very recently appart from the fake fibre that was actually just the same old copper cable you always had. BT just used some marketing jargon to make you think it was fibre. It was actually called VDSL. It used rf signals over the copper wire
It’s not Wightfibres money…… agreed they will sell out once all the government money has been spent.
They must be joking, I’m still waiting for a land-line and basic Internet connection after 8 weeks as plusnet and openreach can’t get their act together and keep blaming each other, apparently its been with frames management at openreach who can’t sort it, 50 employees on the isle of wight? They must all be be hiding down rabbit holes because they’re not sorting me out, joke of a company and don’t even get me started on plusnet, such a bunch of clowns I keep thinking I’m dealing with the circus!!!
You should have twigged re plusnet if you had seen their TV adverts!. 8 weeks is an utter farce.
What about Starlink or Wightfibre? You won’t get good service from a national provider since your just one of millions. They don’t care.
Would not have BT on the Island if they gave it away free.
openreach are a complete let down
Wightfibre were handed all this money to stop BT having a monopoly on the island. They can hardly complain now if BT match or offer a better service.
After suffering the disruption caused by Wightfibre they lost me as a potential customer.
Unfortunately the sequence of events will be:
Simples.
Not true. Wightfibre was privately financed with some government grants. BT would always eventually provide fibre since they are the only national operator. Also don’t forget it will take BT years to achieve since they are just starting. Wightfibew has a long head start and already covers huge parts of Ryde Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor.
False! It was privately financed. And when you say ‘some’ I’m assuming you mean millions
You got in a muddle there mrs ?
It was NOT privately financed….x
Some £9,000,000 in grants.
Regardless of how long BT take to roll out full fibre, the service I have received for the last 10 years has been exceptional.
Maybe 1 or 2 outages in that time and I currently get an average of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload from anywhere in the house or garden. £5 a month for unlimited mobile is a deal clincher for me as part of the package….
Competition has benefits!
Perhaps Wightfibre might regret its attitude at times during upheaval of the Island’s road infrastructure.
Don’t see any evidence they have had a bad attitude. It’s just normal road works conducted by third party highways contractors. It’s no different to any road works except there has obviously been alot going on in a shorter time frame.
Yes it is normal road works, exactly the point. If Island Roads tried to sell me a service I certainly wouldn’t be buying from them either.
They don’t even sweep the roads after. Also threatening caught action if land owners won’t let them across the land
Wightfibre should become a common carrier of broadband, and save all this faffing about.
Of course those of us in rural areas get to pay for everyone else’s broadband and just like digital radio & tv are excluded from the benefits of it!
Beware the communications companies if you have land they want to use. If you are one of the people that signed the dodgy one-sided agreement with Wightfibre allowing then to effectively modify your freehold and basically do what they want on your land then – oh dear! Openreach will inevitably acquire the Wightfibre network and the rights over your land will be transferred to them. I have recently held Openreach to task over another matter to do with my property. It wasn’t pretty but I won! They apparently just do the cheapest work they can and wait to see if anyone complains. Generally people don’t, and they get away with it.