Ultrafast fibre. Down to earth service.
Ultrafast full fibre for the rural Southwest, from a team that lives here too
Switch todayDown to earth broadband
Speed matters, but it isn’t everything. At Wessex Internet, we know great broadband also means a smooth installation, reliable service and people you can trust. That’s what being Down to Earth means to us.
We bring ultrafast full fibre, with speeds of up to 1Gbps, to some of the most remote corners of the South West. Most of our 350-strong team live locally, so they understand the challenges of rural life first-hand.
Commitment to our communties
Our commitment goes beyond connectivity. We’ve invested more than £350,000 in rural charities and community projects. Through our Community Hub initiative, we connect a local project in every build area for just £1. Since 2016, 212 community hubs have benefited, from village halls to Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance.
Our latest is Crea Pax in Wiltshire, an organisation which helps young people who struggle in mainstream education. It combines time with alpacas and evidence-based therapy. Until we connected them, they’d never had reliable internet access.
Watch Martha’s story below.
Crea Pax: ‘it’s not simple when you haven’t had it’
Since being established in 2022, the organisation struggled with everyday essentials including promotion, safeguarding and site security. Wessex Internet offered Crea Pax a £1 connection, which included free installation - which wasn't without its challenges due to the fibre route and the heat. As Martha, Crea Pax founder, said, “Everything is just working as it should. We have laptops for writing our case notes and iPads that students and staff use, and they all just work. That might sound like a really simple thing, but it's not simple when you haven't had it. It feels like a massive luxury, but one that's already just our day-to-day now, and it takes so much pressure off.”
The Wessex Internet community hubs
Since the first Community Hub connection in October 2016, West Knoyle Village Hall, we now have 212 community hubs benefitting from a £1 connection. The connections are wide ranging and support multiple village halls, often the centre of a rural community to wonderful charities including the North Dorset Beekeepers Association, Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance and The Yellow Bus Project, a volunteer-run community garden in Shillingstone, Dorset, who could not afford broadband access until Wessex Internet stepped in to sponsor the project.
A spokesperson said: “We can enable school children who visit the site to instantly research topics that spring up during their visits. It has also allowed us to develop our social media with informative videos and posts, keeping everyone in the community informed”.
The teams we employ from Civils and Garden Works, Sales to Customer Service and Installation Engineers, understand the communities that they service and the majority of our 350 strong work force live locally and therefore understand the challenges that rural life can bring, especially without a broadband connection. They are part of the community and therefore the ability to be Down to Earth is a part of their nature, they understand the our customers' needs and deliver an excellent, award winning service as a result. This is the bedrock of allowing the company going from strength to strength.
Some of the communities and projects we've connected along the way
Winterbourne Stickland Nursery School
When the old school site in Winterborne Stickland went up for auction, villagers worried it might be demolished or redeveloped. They quickly formed a community interest company and launched a GoFundMe to buy the building and reopen it as a nursery. Their efforts paid off, and the nursery now offers full-time, year-round childcare for local families with children from nine months old.
“This has been an amazing community project,” she said. It’s a difficult world at times and it has been so incredibly heart-warming to see how much kindness and community spirit there is within our local community.” - Anna Way, Nursery Trustee
The Big Yellow Bus Garden Project
Before the arrival of ultrafast broadband, Paul faced significant and challenging communication issues, something those living in rural settings are all too familiar with. Sluggish internet speeds, substandard connectivity and the dreaded buffering all hindered Paul’s ability to effectively work from home.
“The installation was done in one day with no fuss. By 6 o’clock in the evening, I was connected to the internet, it was fabulous!”
- Paul Williams, Founder of The Big Yellow Bus Garden Project
