Community Fibre lights up south London gigabit broadband

Hot on the heels of reports slamming unfair pricing and slow speeds within the UK’s broadband industry, especially with fibre, fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provider Community Fibre has teamed with cloud and IT services provider Glemnet to bring gigabit-speed broadband to its customers.

An independent provider of cloud-based telephony systems, IT and cloud services, business internet and business services to the public and private sector, Glemnet said that by partnering with Community Fibre, it would be able to offer the fastest true full-fibre broadband connection in London.

Glemnet has chosen Community Fibre’s Gigafast offering, which offers speeds of 1Gbps and 10Gbps, starting from £299 per month based on a three-year contract.

Community Fibre said its wider roll-out plan for businesses had enabled firms such as Glemnet to provide full-fibre broadband to customers in areas where it was previously unavailable, such as south London.

It added that UK regulators and governing bodies needed to address unfair full-fibre, encourage a healthy, competitive market that would ultimately benefit consumers, and should drive the accelerated roll-out of full-fibre across the UK to stimulate competition, which would have the knock-on effect of reducing prices.

“Thanks to full-fibre connections, we should begin to see a correlation between lower prices and better broadband, namely, better reliability and faster speeds,”Graeme Oxby, Community Fibre’s CEO, told ComputerWeekly.

“The way providers approach pricing needs to change to tip the scales more in favour of the customer, and it is promising that Ofcom is looking to level the playing field through its Fairness to Customers campaign. Price increases after initial promotional periods or during standard contracts and hidden line rental charges are just a few examples of how firms could increase clarity and transparency,” he said.

“Ultimately, the entire industry should be striving to protect the most vulnerable and increase consumer confidence in the industry at large.”