Alternative network operator Grain (Grain Connect) has confirmed that they’re planning to expand their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network into the Greater Manchester (England) town of Bury. The UK network currently covers over 220,000 premises and connects 30,000 customers.
The local rollout in the town, which vaguely aims to reach “thousands of homes”, is getting underway early this very month. After that, the “first customers” are then due to be connected sometime during “Spring 2025“, although it’s unclear how long the build itself will take to reach completion.
The new expansion into Bury isn’t totally unexpected, as they already have some nearby deployments in parts of Oldham, Bolton, Bradford, and Manchester itself. In terms of competitors, both Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) and Openreach already have wide coverage of a gigabit-capable broadband network in Bury. In addition, FullFibre Limited also has some coverage, albeit only in the North of the town.
Grain’s full fibre network can now be found in parts of around 60 other UK locations (plus over 150 new build housing developments), which includes a lot of small-to-modest sized patches of various urban cities and towns like Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Hull, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and so forth.
Prices for Grain’s broadband packages start at £17.99 per month for 150Mbps (symmetric speed) and rise to £28.99 for their top 900Mbps+ tier, which includes a 24-month minimum contract term, a pledge of “no in-contract price rises“, no credit checks, free installation and an included wireless router. The ISP is currently offering the first 2-4 months of service for free to new customers (offer length varies between packages).