Walney Island Gigabit Wireless Broadband rolls out in record time

More than 4,700 homes on Walney Island can now benefit from ultrafast broadband thanks to specialist provider Voneus.  

Partnering with Cambium Networks to design the largest Terragraph network in Europe, Voneus completed the roll-out of its award-winning Gigabit Wireless Broadband network in just 12 weeks, making it the fastest ever deployed worldwide.  

The network can deliver speeds of up to 1 gigabit and Voneus is on track to sign up 1,000 homes by late October.   

The project was made possible through the support of Westmorland and Furness Council, utilising selected lighting columns to deploy the network, leveraging robust millimeter-wave technology to carry the signal from point to point (P2P), with only a minimum of newly built infrastructure. 

Voneus Head of Wireless Build and Maintenance, Pat McPhilimey said, “I feel incredibly proud with a huge sense of achievement to have been part of what is a truly game changing deployment of ultrafast broadband across Walney Island. 

“By connecting so many customers at such an incredible pace means that our better broadband is already helping, supporting and changing the lives of people working from home, families, community groups and school children.” 

Cambium Networks UK, Ireland & Nordics Regional Sales Manager, Dan McCarthy said, “Walney Island has experienced the fastest rollout in terms of homes passed ever seen anywhere and it is now the largest Cambium cnWave network in Europe. Now available to over 10,000 residents means Voneus’ has deployed the largest Cambium cnWave network in the world.” 

Cambium Networks, Vice President of Engineering Antony Holmes said, “Voneus has broken records with this deployment: within 3 months they went from planning to rollout and implementation, now providing gigabit services to thousands of users. This is the largest deployment of cnWave in Europe and shows just how scalable Cambium's cnWave 60 GHz solution is”.  

Retired Walney Island resident Mike Coward recently had his Voneus broadband installed and is delighted with the service. 

“The decision to switch to Voneus was really quite easy: we’d had three previous broadband suppliers and they never reached the targets or the promises that they made in terms of the speeds. 

“The broadband speeds that we get now from Voneus are much better than we previously had. In fact, I would say they’re four times better.  

“We tend to use our broadband for just normal things like watching TV, but we do regularly FaceTime with a number of the family. We have around seven or eight devices including TVs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones.  

“We’re not gamers. We just want a good system that works whenever we want it to work.” 

Voneus is working closely with the community on Walney Island, and to date has supported community groups including Walney FC, Walney School, the Roundhouse Café, Walney ARLFC and provided free broadband connections to the North Scale Community Centre and the Walney Community Centre on Central Drive.  

Les McLeese from the Walney Community Centre, said, “As a youth and community centre it is important that we offer the best support we can to our service users. With an evolving era of everything becoming digital and online we rely heavily on consistent and reliable Wi-Fi access. 

“The island has been left behind compared to other parts of the town and other the years we have struggled to keep up with demand: in the past we’ve had to take game consoles home with us to ensure they update, as the Island’s broadband was too slow for this. 

“We are delighted that Voneus has provided us with superb speeds and service.” 

Voneus won the Best Gigabit Wireless Project UK WISPA award for its Walney Island network. It was recognised for the project's innovative use of Terragraph mesh network technology and millimeter-wave P2P links, overcoming line-of-sight and infrastructure challenges in a forward-thinking manner.  

Voneus has transformed the connectivity for 4,700 homes and businesses on Walney Island off the coast of Cumbria who can now access gigabit speeds.