The normally city-focused full fibre (FTTP/B) broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which claims to have built their network to cover 1.9 million UK homes (mostly across blocks of flats / MDUs), has been spotted deploying a seemingly random single street cabinet in the small rural Shropshire (England) town of Bridgnorth. But there’s method in the madness.
The chosen location, which sits slap bang in the middle of an existing residential area inside the town, is not one of Hyperoptic’s usual haunts (they prefer dense urban) and there appear to be no near-term street works planned for the surrounding area. Suffice to say it was a bit of a mystery.
In such a scenario the only thing that would make sense, in this specific area, is for the operator to be conducting prep work for a future new build homes development. The Tasley Garden Village project for c.1,500 new homes is one such development, but that’s still several years away, and roughly half a mile from the new cabinet (albeit taking place on the same side of the town).
Despite this, Hyperoptic have now confirmed to ISPreview that the cabinet is part of their “plan to support a future new-build development in the area, specifically the Tasley Garden Village site“. Despite the odd location of the cabinet, there’s currently no wider town rollout planned “at this stage” and the operator said the new infrastructure had been “installed ahead of development to ensure connectivity is in place as the site progresses“.
Suffice to say, it’s always cheapest to run new fibre before the homes are built, but at this stage it’s still too early for Hyperoptic to confirm the precise network coverage and timings. Such details are expected to surface once the development leaves the planning phase and progresses into construction.
We should point out that Crest Nicholson Homes have also recently started building on a small patch opposite the Tasley Garden Village site for c.300 homes, but Hyperoptic does not appear to be catering for that one. The town is otherwise already well covered by gigabit-capable broadband networks from Openreach and Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre).
