FibreNation Start 1Gbps FTTH Broadband Rollout in Harrogate

The UK FibreNation project, which is currently being acquired by Cityfibre from TalkTalk for £200m (here), has today announced that they’ve started to roll-out their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband ISP network to 50,000 premises across the town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire.

At present FibreNation has already nearly completed their roll-out to over 50,000 premises in the city of York and they recently started work to cover 61,000 premises in Dewsbury (here), with Knaresborough and Ripon set to follow in the “coming months“.

Currently the only broadband ISPs able to sell services over this network are TalkTalk and Sky Broadband (Ultra Fibre Optic), but that will change once the sale to Cityfibre completes in March 2020 (e.g. eventually Vodafone and others will get access).

In the meantime the operator said that their engineers have begun street works in the Bilton area of north Harrogate and, assuming all goes to plan, then the company hopes to complete their build in the town by 2023 (we assume the end of 2023 but they don’t say).

Paul Crane, Head of Engagement and Rollout at FibreNation, said:

“By bringing full fibre to Harrogate, we are bolstering an already brilliant area in which to both live and work by putting another Yorkshire destination on the full-fibre map. Having high speed full fibre will bring benefits to the residents and businesses in the district and is a strong next step in achieving our goal of connecting three million homes in the next ten years.

Fibre is the fourth utility we’ve all been waiting for and we’re proud to be at the forefront of its rollout across Yorkshire and beyond.”

Councillor Graham Swift, Harrogate Borough Council, said:

“The announcement of full-fibre arriving in Harrogate is a major step forward towards our ambition to make Harrogate District ‘smart’ and fit for the 2020s. It follows a UK-leading smart parking initiative in 2019 and further investment will support the town culturally and economically. I look forward to rollout reaching Knaresborough and Ripon in the near future.

This project supports our economic growth strategy that aims to improve connectivity, which in turn supports businesses growth and investment across the district.”

The announcement took us a little bit by surprise this morning as normally companies that are in the process of being sold tend to go quiet until after that process has concluded, which is partly because that’s the polite way of doing things and it also gives the new owner an opportunity to unveil any big new developments under their own name. By comparison there is no mention of Cityfibre in today’s news.

So far FibreNation has put an initial investment of around £85m+ toward their full fibre builds in Yorkshire.