Where is VX Fiber active?

Today, I was scanning the recent planning applications in my neigbourhood and spotted this one from VX Fiber requesting permission to erect a telecoms cabinet in Haverhill, Suffolk. I had a look at their website and so far they have a presence in only two locations in the UK: a collaboration with Stoke-on-Trent council and one with Grosvenor Estate in London.
Here in Haverhill City Fibre installed fibre to connect all council offices, schools and surgeries, so its unlikely that VX Fibre is installing council connections. Haverhill is on the Openreach list and about half of the town has been connected up, and recently, Lightspeed started installing underground boxes. So it puzzles me why VX Fiber would pick Haverhill, unless it's part of a bigger initiative. Has any activity (e.g. planning applications) been seen elsewhere?
Their website promises an 'Open Access Network' so they intend to compete with Openreach, not with ISPs.
The London initiative includes offers from 3 ISPs

Have you checked on bidb.uk ?

I'm not sure how I would do that. AFAIK you need to enter a postcode to display any information on the BIDB map near that area. I am interested, but not so interested that I will be looking up postcodes across the UK. Or have I missed a feature on the BIDB site?
As VX Fiber is only in the planning application stage in Haverhill, nothing shows on BIDB yet.

They’re also building up the road in Colchester. Target is 25,000 premises

Elsewhere nationally also in Crewe and Nantwich, which they announced a few months after Colchester and in addition to Stoke-on-Trent and the London Grosvenor build.

After checking LilaConnect website they are building/present also in:
- Uttoxeter
- Bristol
- Leek


More on their rollout plans from Jan '22 ISPreview article here.

Haverhill is on the Openreach list and about half of the town has been connected up, and recently, Lightspeed started installing underground boxes. So it puzzles me why VX Fiber would pick Haverhill, unless it's part of a bigger initiative.

It is not unusual at all for multiple AltNets to overbuild one another and Openreach in certain towns and cities. There are numerous examples.

The planning documents from the portal calls for the erection of a pre-fab, containerised and hardened head-end node (the "hut") that will contain the active electronics for their point-to-point based network. They note it can serve up to 6000 customers. It is similar in concept and execution to CityFibre's FEx (Fibre Exchange) nodes - effectively a very small version of a BT exchange. CityFibre claim they can serve up to 60,000 customers from a FEx.

Edit: updated list of locations etc...

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 11-Jun-22 16:19:39)

I was quite excited about them coming to the Colchester area as they're currently building around where I live. I was shot back down to earth after finding out they run on CGNAT and have no IPv6.

The wait continues.

This is down to the ISP offering rather than the network itself.

I think that you are presently restricted to Air Broadband and Pure Broadband over LilaConnect / VX Fiber's net in Colchester?

In their Prime Fibre joint venture with The Grosvenor Estate, VX Fiber are offering Community Fibre as an ISP. Which is interesting given that in London Community Fibre build and operate their own 600,000+ premises footprint FTTP network. CF also operate using DHCP based IPv4 and IPv6 for residential customers.

Edit: to clarify serving ISPs

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 11-Jun-22 16:26:45)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

This is down to the ISP offering rather than the network itself.

You're right of course. I'm not sure about Pure because I can't find any reliable info but both Air and LilaConnect as an ISP themselves state CGNAT and make no mention whatsoever of IPv6.

Aside from the obvious speed benefits it would be a functional step backwards as I host a few simple v4 and v6 connectable services.

A public IP address is available from LilaConnect themselves. Some of us early adopters got it for free, currently it's an extra £6 a month. £36 for 1Gpbs up and down is still extremely competitive.

I agree that it's a shame about IPv6, though. You could set up a he.net 6on4 tunnel.

In reply to a post by phoenixw:

Some of us early adopters got it for free, currently it's an extra £6 a month.

I wonder if "early adopter" is area specific or whether that window has already passed. Bit unfair if I wanted to jump on it as soon as it's available here and had to pay that £6 a month while others didn't.

Seems steep considering I get static v4 and a /48 v6 with Zen for no extra cost.

In reply to a post by Senn:

I wonder if "early adopter" is area specific or whether that window has already passed.

It's passed. It was free in my area (Stoke) but they stopped it. I think it's because they want to ensure people really need it, if you look at their ASN details (AS44176) they don't have many IPv4 addresses assigned. It looks like there are plenty of ranges they could carve from their parent/sister companies as required.

In reply to a post by Senn:

Seems steep considering I get static v4 and a /48 v6 with Zen for no extra cost.

Can Zen supply you anything close to 1Gbps down AND up for £36 a month? IMO the service is a steal even at that price, without ipv6 and the reliability is (touch wood) excellent. I really hope they add ipv6 soon, I can see they have a /29 assigned to the UK so here's hoping they can beat VM to implementation... The router they supply is configured in dual stack mode by default so I'm hoping it's on the radar.

Edited by phoenixw (Tue 14-Jun-22 09:39:02)