New ISP Swish has revealed an additional 22 poorly served towns that will benefit from its lightning-fast 10Gbps full-fibre network.
In total, Swish is intending to spend £250 million to connect 250,000 premises across 33 communities in the Home Counties to the UK’s fastest commercially available broadband.
It announced the initial 11 locations, accounting for 50,000 premises, late last year. Now the first connections will go live in Marlow, Buckinghamshire in July. To sell the service in a time of coronavirus, Swish has worked to engage the local community through video calls and Q&A sessions and interest in the service has reportedly exceeded expectations.
Installation work is already underway in neighbouring town Gerrards Cross and will start in Beaconsfield in the autumn, with Swish Fibre going live in "at least" 10 towns by next June.
Swish is primarily aiming to connect “underserved towns and villages where broadband availability is poor and there is strong demand for ultrafast broadband services.” Now it’s adding 22 towns to that list, to be connected in the coming years.
Those include:
All these towns “have been carefully selected as commercially viable, following an extensive evaluation process undertaken by Swish Fibre and independent analysts.” However, some towns already do have FTTP connections, with Gigaclear active in Sevenoaks and Virgin Media's full-fibre operating in East Grinstead.
Brice Yharrassarry, CEO of Swish Fibre, said: “We’re thrilled to announce our wider rollout plans today, which brings the first phase of full-fibre rollout up to a quarter of a million properties covered in the Home Counties. Construction works on the ground are progressing extremely well and the early signs of interest within Marlow [have] exceeded our expectations. We’re excited to have started civils work in Gerrards Cross and are on track to be active in at least ten towns by June 2021.”
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