Upp partners with Light Source for full fibre broadband rollout

Network provider Upp has announced a partnership with infrastructure development company Light Source to facilitate their £1bn project to deploy a gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network.

Upp will roll out the broadband network mainly in the East of England, and aims to have covered 1 million homes and businesses by 2025.

The initial deployment started in September this year in various towns across Lincolnshire and Norfolk.

It has been unclear up until now which civil engineering firms would be aiding the deployment, and which other locations had been selected for the network.

The first phase of the deployment will cover around 300,000 homes across 50 towns in Norfolk and Lincolnshire by the end of next year.

The £1bn in funding is supported by investment firm LetterOne, and includes £300m in equity with the remaining £700m coming in the form of debt.

Installations and maintenance has thus far been carried out by Upp’s own field engineers, however, the ISP needed to partner with other contractors in order to meet their targets as training fibre engineers takes a considerable amount of time.

Upp’s Chief Operations Officer, Eryl Stafford, said: “We are thrilled to be working with Light Source. We chose them because they strive for excellence in their delivery of FTTH infrastructure, but also align with Upp on so many of our values. There’s an exciting future ahead as we continue our roll-out alongside Light Source throughout the East of England.”

Managing director of Light Source, Steve Hill, said: “The team at Light Source are delighted to secure this partnership. Upp have some very ambitious plans and we are privileged to be part of their journey to rapidly rollout fibre to communities and businesses.”

The ISP’s first target is to connect 30,000 homes and businesses by the end of the current year. The goal is quite modest for a firm with such ambitious targets for the future, but is still impressive given the short timeframe.

ISPreview’s Mark Jackson said: “The biggest challenge for Upp is that they’ll be deploying into some of the same locations as rival operators, such as County Broadband and Lightspeed Broadband. Other operators, such as B4RN, Openreach and Virgin Media, are also operating in some of the same areas where Upp may end up targeting in the future.”