Thursday, December 19th, 2019 (9:03 am) - Score 5,582

New full fibre ISP Swish Fibre, which was this week acquired by Fern Trading (here) to help unlock an investment of £250m and fuel the roll-out of a 10Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 250,000 UK premises (starting outside London), has today revealed the first 11 locations to benefit.. in Buckinghamshire.

The ink is barely dry on this week’s acquisition by Fern Trading Limited (they’ve also gobbled Jurassic Fibre in the south west of England) and it looks like the first civil engineering work is about to start. A total of 11 locations across the M4 corridor and Chiltern line are now being targeted as part of their initial roll-out plan.

The 11 Locations: Marlow; Gerrards Cross; Beaconsfield; Flackwell Heath; Wooburn Green and Bourne End; Hazlemere; Great Missenden; Thame; Chinnor; Princes Risborough; and Haddenham.

Swish Fibre, which intends to make use of Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts and poles where viable (Physical Infrastructure Access), has previously indicated that they would aim to tackle “underserved towns and villages where broadband availability is poor and there is strong demand for ultrafast broadband services.”

At present most of the initial towns and village locations appear to exist in Buckinghamshire. Apparently further towns within commutable distance of London will be announced later in 2020.

Brice Yharrassarry, CEO of Swish Fibre, said: “Following the overwhelmingly positive response to our acquisition by Fern we have been asked by several sources where Swish are going to build their first fibre networks. We are currently working on a project to cover over 250,000 properties and the 50,000 announced today represent the first tranche. Discussions with the County Council and construction partners are well advanced and we plan to break ground as soon as we can in 2020.”

We’re expecting the build itself to begin during Q1 2020.