In a period of a couple of years Braintree has gone from just a copper and part fibre network via VDSL2 to the majority of premises having at least one full-fibre network available.
Braintree now holds the title of the first place in the UK where there are five different FTTP networks are available and while its only about 425 premises at this time, with 3,629 premises already covered by four FTTP networks we expect the number with a quintet of choice to increase.
The part of Braintree where this massive amount of fibre has been rolled out is around Deerleap Way and Bridport Way on the eastern edge of the town. The five FTTP networks that comprise this level of choice are Openreach, nexfibre, swishfibre, Lightspeed and Gigaclear.
nexfibre only surfaced on our map in Braintree this morning, but we would expect the roll-out to spread across more of Braintree.
Looking at the Braintree exchange 24,930 premises have one or more full-fibre broadband option and 3,115 properties still don’t have any full-fibre available, giving a FTTP availability of 88.8%. Looking at the wider Braintree District council which includes more rural locations the full-fibre availability drops to 66.1%.
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” 3,115 properties still don’t have any full-fibre available”
I wonder how many of those 3k properties are equal or marginally more expensive to build to. I do think the five comapanies have missed a trick ..
What do their telegraph poles look like? lol
A complete joke.
Fibre is fibre is fibre (is fibre is fibre).
Having competition at this level is ridiculous.
Yes franchises area by area if need be but five in one area where other areas have nothing?
Change gas or electricity supplier and they don’t put a new pipe or cable in.
OFCOM need dismantling!
Unless there’s infrastructure sharing, each company has paid full construction costs for, on average 20% of the market. I can’t that being sustainable.
Looks messy – https://maps.app.goo.gl/TNCu4r3HjarZ54uR6
@Somerset Not as bad as some pavement installs!
You can see how using existing poles deployment is cheap encouraging lots of overbuild. I don’t think towns with lots of old ducts are ever going to get this level of deployment.
I live in Braintree and Gigaclear were around for about a year cutting their own trenches to lay fibre all over the town (quite disruptive to traffic). I’m currently signing up to FTTP with Zen which uses openreach and they are simply laying new fibre in existing service tunnels where the old copper lines are/were. Virgin are also using the same tunnels do I don’t know why Gigaclear had to make their own – couldn’t have been cheap!
Clydach Vale in South Wales will be live with at least 4 providers soon.
Grain Connect already live in parts
Ogi currently building
Virgin/O2/NextFibre currently building
Openreach planned
Netomnia planned
CF40 2RY
@Somerset, I don’t know if you did this on purpose, but have you noticed how, if you just pan 90 degrees left from the location you shared, you can see a crew either repairing an overloaded pole leaning under load, or replacing it with the metallic pole that can be seen just behind it….
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.8780846,0.5577338,3a,15y,-0.21h,93.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSb6bXaM9D0NOUkKOJ5sAFQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
If the look at the dates for the street view you will see that from the posted links it was 2023.
If you move up the street towards the other poles its 2019.
So the bent pole has been there a few years and the metal pole is BT the wooden one is main electric supply.
As ever, the devils in the detail.