Connecting Frognal Place: Bringing Full Fibre to 82 Homes in Sidcup
A suburban London address is no guarantee of access to full-fibre broadband. At Frognal Place in Sidcup, residents had lived with speeds below 5Mbps for years, while repeated attempts to secure a fibre provider had stalled.
Working with housing association Hyde and Openreach, SCCI Alphatrack and 4Fibre helped break that impasse. Through the Fibre Assist service, the team coordinated the permissions, planning and delivery needed to bring full-fibre connectivity to 82 homes across 11 buildings.
The Client
Hyde has provided affordable housing for almost 60 years, with a longstanding presence in London and the South East. It forms part of the wider Hyde Group, which owns or manages around 130,000 homes across the country, combining housing provision with property management and community services.
The Estate
Frognal Place comprises 82 homes across 11 apartment buildings in Sidcup, south-east London. Set back from the main road amidst fields, allotments and sports facilities, the estate occupies a leafy suburban setting close to Queen Mary’s Hospital and the A20.
Get in touch
Are your residents struggling with poor broadband? Our Fibre Assist service helps housing providers secure full-fibre connectivity, including at properties where previous attempts to find a provider have stalled. Get in touch to find out how we can help:
The Challenge
Despite its suburban location, Frognal Place had remained in a gap in full-fibre coverage. Demand from residents was clear, but previous efforts to find an operator willing to connect the estate had proved unsuccessful.
When Hyde joined SCCI Alphatrack’s Fibre Assist service, Frognal Place was a priority. With broadband speeds below 5Mbps, residents needed a connection better suited to everyday demands – especially in view of the rise in working from home.
Fibre Assist supports housing providers across their portfolios, identifying properties that need full-fibre connectivity and helping secure delivery, particularly where demand exists but finding a provider has proved difficult.
At Frognal Place, the task was to establish a viable route to connection and manage the process on Hyde’s behalf. This meant bringing together the permissions, network planning and operator approvals needed to move the estate from an unresolved request to a deliverable project.
The Delivery
SCCI Alphatrack took the estate’s connectivity problems to Openreach and coordinated the work required to progress the installation.
The team secured the wayleave between Hyde and Openreach, providing the necessary permission to install the infrastructure. Surveying and planning then established how fibre could reach the estate and serve its buildings, with SCCI Alphatrack coordinating route approval and securing network capacity.
Managing these stages together gave Hyde a single point of coordination throughout the project. Each approval formed part of a wider delivery programme, taking the proposed connection through Openreach’s approval process and into the build.
The resulting Fibre to the Home deployment extended full-fibre infrastructure across all 82 premises.
The Outcome
Frognal Place now has access to ultrafast full-fibre broadband, giving residents an alternative to the slow connections that had frustrated for years.
For Hyde, the project resolved a priority site where previous attempts to secure a provider had reached an impasse. By managing the process from access permissions through to the build, SCCI Alphatrack helped translate residents’ demand for better broadband into the infrastructure needed to deliver it.
We're proud to have turned years of slow internet, complaints and frustrated residents into modern, reliable ultrafast connectivity. I hope Frognal Place's residents are enjoying the future!
Steve Chesterman, Operations Director, SCCI Alphatrack & 4Fibre