CityFibre Starts FTTP Broadband Rollout To Business Parks

CityFibre has commenced its rollout of fibre to business parks located in the 40 cities across the UK it serves, starting with Bristol, Coventry and Peterborough.

The company claims its fibre to the premise (FTTP) network will eventually deliver 1Gbps speeds to 500 such parks, serving 22,000 businesses.

CityFibre wants to become a rival to BT Openreach and plans to extend its service to 100 locations across the UK by 2025, claiming this will serve 60 percent of the country’s businesses and 40 percent of homes outside London.

Read More: CityFibre wants to challenge BT Openreach

CityFibre FTTP

“After decades of underinvestment, Openreach’s antiquated network infrastructure is strangling our nation’s businesses,” declared CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch. “Access to full-fibre connectivity is the only long term solution, and this is currently either unavailable or so cost-prohibitive that it has remained out of reach for most.

“By extending our Fibre to the Premises roll-out to business parks across our national network, we are bringing affordable, world-class connectivity to the doorsteps of thousands of businesses for the first time. This is preparing our cities for an inevitable future upgrade to Fibre to the Home.”

“In last week’s Autumn Statement we committed to investing another £1billion in the UK’s digital infrastructure and to support the delivery of full-fibre broadband,” said Matt Hancock, minister for digital and culture, referencing the £400 million allocated for ultrafast broadband that will be supplemented by private funding.

“Fibre is the future, so today’s announcement by CityFibre is another boost to help achieve our ambitious goals. It will give small businesses across the country access to fast and reliable broadband and encourage other emerging providers to scale up so we remain a world-leading economy.”

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CityFibre has been busy recently, declaring Northampton and Reading as its two most recent ‘Gigabit cities, building on the purchase of KCOM’s national fibre infrastructure for £90 million last year. A deal with rural FTTP provider Gigaclear has also been struck.

Latest: Ofcom to force BT Openreach split

It often builds networks for local councils who serve as an anchor tenant before building out to serve residential and business communities who can subscribe to 1Gbps broadband through third party partners.

BT will deliver ‘ultrafast’ broadband to 10 million properties by the end of the decade using a combination of G.Fast and FTTP, while Virgin Media plans to connect two million premises to FTTP by 2019. A number of other providers, including Gigaclear and Hyperoptic, are also rolling out networks and TalkTalk is working with CityFibre on a joint-venture in York.

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