CityFibre UK to Build City-Wide Fibre Optic Broadband Network in Aberdeen

Fibre optic infrastructure developer CityFibre has claimed that it will create Scotland’s first “Gigabit City” by confirming their plans to build a city-wide fibre optic broadband network in Aberdeen, which will mirror their similar Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) style roll-outs in York, Bournemouth, Peterborough and Coventry.

The development, which will be rolled out in conjunction with local ISP Internet for Business (IFB), aims to eventually deliver Internet speeds of 1000Mbps (Megabits per second) to over 6,000 companies in the city, not to mention “hundreds of public sector sites” including schools, universities, libraries, hospitals and government agency buildings.

As with previous announcements CityFibre has also hinted at the prospect of using the network to “act as the backbone” for any future deployments of a Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) style service for the city’s residents, although this usually comes much later and wasn’t terribly successful in Bournemouth. However CityFibre are also working with Sky Broadband and TalkTalk in York to make a home service that looks much more promising (here and here).

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“We selected Aberdeen as it represents the perfect opportunity for a Gigabit City project. Its economic power, business makeup and absence of alternative network mean that Aberdeen will be in a position to take full advantage of this transformational digital infrastructure. Alongside IFB, CityFibre is honoured to be able to add to the proud history of this city by building a modern digital infrastructure that will future proof Aberdeen, its businesses and residents for the next 100 years.”

Jenny Laing, Leader of Aberdeen City Council, said:

“We are hugely excited to see CityFibre and IFB bring this project to life ensuring that Aberdeen city and shire have a next generation digital infrastructure in place to further economic growth over the coming years. CityFibre’s decision to make Aberdeen a Gigabit City helps us to realise the ambitions laid out in Accelerate Aberdeen of being at the leading edge of the digital revolution, with the world-class connectivity essential for continued growth and helps lay the foundations for significant improvements for residential customers in the future.”

Apparently Aberdeen accounts for 28% of Scotland’s GDP and 30% of the country’s top 100 businesses are located there, although CityFibre claims that despite the area having a strong take-up rate for broadband there is “an absence of any cable infrastructure“. This is not entirely correct as Ofcom reports that “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) is available to 62.80% of Aberdeen and indeed BT’s FTTC infrastructure does exist there and looks set to improve over the next 2-3 years.

However the existence of rival networks hasn’t stopped CityFibre before and the fact that they’ve been able to raise around £50m worth of financial backing to help develop their network suggests that others also see a strong opportunity for growth in this field. Hyperoptic have already become a modest success out of taking a not dissimilar approach.

As before CityFibre’s roll-out will be demand-led, arriving first in areas where there is the strongest interest, and a campaign to build demand among businesses is due to start shortly. In the meantime CityFibre has already started planning for the initial deployment phase, which will start in the city-centre and south of the city (e.g. industrial estates such as Tullos and Altens, as well as the north as far as Dyce and The Bridge of Don).

Subject to demand, the build programme will then be extended to areas in the west of the city, such as Westhill and Kingswells. A press briefing is due to be held on 23rd September, at which more details will be revealed.

UPDATE 1:47pm

Small correction. The press release incorrectly said 100Mbps but as expected it should have been 1000Mbps (1Gbps). Also Virgin Media doesn’t appear to have any cable down in the city, so we’ve taken that out (got briefly confused with their old DSL services).