As a burgeoning small broadband-adjacent business ourselves, we are suckers for a good local success story. Dundee broadband provider Fibrecast has grown from around 70 customers to 1,500 in just five years. Turnover has increased five-fold, according to exclusive reporting by The Courier, despite the company remaining a remarkably small local operation.
Fibrecast was founded by Kieran Paton in 2015 and is now run by Paton and chief operating officer Sebastian Varney. Its customers include V&A Dundee, Dundee Science Centre and LiveHouse, while Dundee City Council has also called on the company after struggling to arrange connections through larger providers.
The company began by supplying wireless broadband to rural homes and businesses between Perth and Dundee. It later built its own Full Fibre network and became one of the first providers to use Dundee’s £40 million CityFibre network. Fibrecast has now completed another local project in Liff, with work in Birkhill due to follow.
Image Credit: The Courier
Fibrecast founder Kieran Paton iand chief operating officer Sebastian Varney
What Fibrecast offers Dundee households
The Courier reports that Fibrecast currently charges £40 per month for 900Mbps broadband over CityFibre, with speeds of up to 2.5Gbps coming to some areas. Availability depends on your address because Fibrecast uses a mixture of its own local network and connections supplied through CityFibre and Openreach.
Fibrecast says those partnerships allow it to reach more than 90% of homes and businesses across Dundee, Broughty Ferry and Monifieth. It also promises no mid-contract price rises and no sudden increase when your original contract ends, removing two of the most irritating habits found elsewhere in the broadband market.
Its other selling point is simply being nearby. Varney told The Courier that the same people can handle a customer from installation through to support, without chatbots or enormous call-centre queues. The company says it can sometimes visit a local home within an hour, although its ambition is to grow carefully rather than become another national provider.
