City-focused UK gigabit broadband ISP Hyperoptic has today announced the signing of a new contract with Islington Council in London, which they say will help to extend the coverage of their “full fibre” (FTTP/B) network to “more than 90% of Islington homes and businesses” by August 2025.

The deal is said to include, among other things, more than 30,000 residential homes. As part of this, the Clerkenwell area will receive access to Hyperoptic’s gigabit speed network within the next three months, with the rest of Islington connected on a three-year delivery program.

The provider will also be connecting more than 50 community hubs across Islington with free broadband connections. All of this should help the operator to reach their target of covering 2 million UK homes by the end of 2023 (they already claim to have completed over 900,000 premises).

Cllr Una O’Halloran, Islington Council, said:

“Fast, reliable internet is essential in our increasingly digital world and better broadband for council homes is an important part of our work to make Islington a more equal borough.

We are bringing the benefit of superfast broadband to people living on our estates and in our council homes. We are also pleased that this partnership with Hyperoptic will create apprenticeships and job opportunities in the borough.”

Dana Tobak, CEO of Hyperoptic, said:

“This partnership will make a huge difference to people living and working in Islington. We’re working with Islington Council to ensure that the right broadband plan is available for all of its residents – many will now be able to choose gigabit speeds at unbeatable prices, or take advantage of our social tariffs, and some will benefit from free broadband for a year through our Affordable Product Scheme.”

Just to be clear about all this, we understand that the Council’s commitment is to cover 90% of their “social housing“, but in order to achieve that Hyperoptic will have to build a “Hyperzone” that includes all of that area – the end result is they expect to cover approximately 85-90% of the premises in the whole borough, due to the spread of the social housing portfolio.

Customers of the provider currently pay from £17.99 per month for a basic 30Mbps tier (£25 after the first 24-months), which rises to just £35 for their top 900Mbps package (£60 after the first 24-months). Hyperoptic also offers a Fair Fibre Plan in the form of a social tariff for those on benefits, which starts at £15 per month for an unlimited 50Mbps package and rises to £25 for 150Mbps.

Full Fibre but with copper at the end.

Not lately, I think they are using Genexis FiberTwist devices as the ONT and run fibre all the way in.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/09/community-fibre-prep-100-fttp-broadband-cover-in-islington.html#respond

And now got CF on their doorstep too – although CF are there first. Maybe they should remember the UK is not just London?

Hyperoptic are all over the place?

Lots of local authorities are using CityFibre. CityFibre don’t have metro networks in London. Makes sense with that in mind that Hyperoptic and others end up with more coverage in London.

Just taking advantage of the gap in CityFibre coverage.

If it’s fibre to the ONT then you’ve got FTTP. Any cable downstream of the ONT, be it Ethernet or coaxial, is immaterial in this context.

@XGS Is On, noone said anything about cityFibre. @Humphrey’s comment that you were replying to linked an article about Community Fibre, an ISP deploying to London only, and then referred to them with the CF acronym.

@Roger_Gooner, I think @Alex was referring to the fact that most hyperoptic deployments in MDUs have fibre to some off-limits Comms cupboard in the block, housing HOs equipment that ultimately ends up with a switch and an ethernet run from it to every apartment. As a customer you don’t get fibre to your home, you get an ethernet cable into an RJ45 wall socket. No ONT in sight. I personally don’t think this is an issue, it’s not like Openreach/CityFibre…etc allow you to use your own ONT anyway, so what’s the difference if the fibre terminates in your home or not? I have a bigger issue with the fact that some of these ethernet runs are huge and they use cat5e, meaning any future potential 10gb offering won’t be straightforward. For the cost difference, they should have just prepped for 10g, especially on the shorter <45m runs, cat6 price difference is negligible in the world of FTTP deployments.

@Harmeet The typical Hyperotic MDU installation is FTTB to a lockbox containing the ONT and cat 5e to RJ45 wall sockets in the apartments, but in all cases Hyperotic has to work to whatever cabling and constraints already exist and variations on installations do exist. The specification for cat 5e is 1Gbps over 100m, so this looks suitable for quite a while.

Hyperoptic does not cover SDU so it’s interesting they literally announce the number at 90%

Hyperoptic have been building to SDUs in increasing amounts for a while now. The cabinet in the picture is to mostly serve SDUs.

Will be interesting seeing the overbuild then because Gnetworks has already covered half of Islington

G.Network have built a lot, including my street which they haven’t released for orders to be placed for three months since finishing. They also don’t respond to emails enquiring when they might be ready and are more expensive than Hyperoptic.

I was excited about G.Network but they’re very bad at talking to prospective customers, whereas I’ve had Hyperoptic before and was happy with them.

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