Grain's full fibre has gone live in part of Scunthorpe

Grain, the Carlisle based altnet, has switched on its full fibre network in Scunthorpe, and people in the town can now order it. As reported by ISPreview, the operator has confirmed the Lincolnshire network has started going live, around four months after street works were first spotted there. Grain says its point to point network passes about 300,000 UK premises and carries roughly 56,000 customers.

The caveat comes from ISPreview itself. The build does not look to have spread much beyond the part of town where the work started, around Crosby in the north, and it says that needs further checking to confirm. Scunthorpe is home to around 81,000 people. Live in the town and live at your address are not the same thing, and which house gets which network is settled street by street, which is what the availability checker is for.

Scunthorpe is not short of fibre already, which is the interesting part. ISPreview counts three gigabit capable networks in the town, from Openreach, Virgin Media including nexfibre, and MS3, plus a smaller, more business focused build from ITS Technology. Grain is arriving fourth, into a town where plenty of people who want full fibre can already get it from somebody.

That tends to be good news for whoever pays the bill. ISPreview reports that Grain’s entry level 250Mbps package is currently £19.99 a month on a 24 month term, with the 2Gbps tier at £29.99, both carrying a bill credit worth between £25 and £100 depending on which one you take. It reads that pricing as aimed at undercutting the operator’s biggest rivals in the town. Those are the figures ISPreview quotes rather than a quote for your postcode, and Grain does not publish prices without one.

Two things worth holding onto. Being able to order is not the same as being connected. And a 24 month term signed at an opening price is a long commitment to a network that has only just reached the street, so a price that holds for the whole term is worth more than a large opening discount if your current deal goes up every spring.

Grain says it wants to reach 600,000 premises, with a longer term ambition beyond a million, so Scunthorpe is one town inside a much bigger plan. What no announcement can tell you is which streets are actually live today. That is the question worth settling before you start a switch.