CityFibre has awarded its first round of contracts to build partners as part of Project Gigabit.
Project Gigabit is the government’s £5 billion programme to connect 715,000 rural properties, ensuring they have access to high-speed broadband services.
CityFibre has appointed the following as its build partners:
- Granemore Group in Cambridgeshire
- OCU Group and CCN Communications in Hampshire
- OCU Group in Norfolk
- Telelink, OCU Group, and Granemore Group in Suffolk
With these partnerships in place, CityFibre is ready to commence the initial phase of construction in each of the target locations. The first homes expected to benefit from this initiative will be in Cambridgeshire, with service provision slated to begin in October.
The four Project Gigabit contracts, valued at £387 million and awarded to CityFibre through a competitive process, will be complemented by a substantial private investment from CityFibre amounting to £223 million. This combined commitment represents an investment of well over half a billion pounds in the Project Gigabit programme.
CityFibre’s nationwide full-fibre network already passes more than 3 million premises, with over 2.7 million designated as “Ready For Service.”
The company’s ongoing full-fibre network expansion aims to cover up to a third of the UK. This year alone, CityFibre is on track to make approximately one million homes “Ready For Service,” solidifying its position as the UK’s second-largest full-fibre platform.
In areas where CityFibre’s network has matured, take-up rates are reportedly approaching 30 percent.
One key feature of CityFibre’s rollouts is the adoption of the latest full-fibre technology known as XGS-PON. This advanced technology empowers CityFibre’s ISP partners to offer homes and businesses access to even faster and more reliable services.
With XGS-PON, speeds of up to 2.5Gbps are currently available, which is 35x faster than the UK’s average broadband speed. Furthermore, this technology has the potential to deliver speeds of up to 10Gbps in the future, ensuring that rural communities have access to world-class internet connectivity.
Greg Mesch, CEO at CityFibre, said:
“We’re excited to get our Project Gigabit rollouts underway, bringing faster and more reliable broadband connectivity to hundreds of thousands of rural homes and businesses in areas that were at risk of missing out.
With the legacy copper networks in these areas soon to be made obsolete, we look forward to providing all ISPs with a powerful new network from which to better serve their customers.”
As CityFibre forges ahead with its commitment to bridge the digital divide in rural areas, these full-fibre rollouts will transform the lives of countless residents and businesses and ensure they are not left behind.
See also: UK invests £88M in Open RAN initiatives transforming mobile connectivity
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