CityFibre Update on FTTP Build in Harrogate, Ripon and Knaresborough
CityFibre has announced that their £46m project to deploy a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based UK broadband ISP network across Harrogate, Ripon and Knaresborough in North Yorkshire has now gone live for “thousands of premises“, including in Bilton, Woodlands, Rossett Green, Pannal, Valley Gardens and New Park.
The rollout in Harrogate is currently expected to “reach completion later this year“, with “almost every home and business locally” gaining access to the new full fibre services from a range of ISPs. The rollout is also progressing into new areas in Ripon. All of this is being supported by the operator’s local civil engineering contractor, the Makehappen Group.
The work forms part of Cityfibre’s wider effort to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) – across over 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). The operator has so far covered a total of 2.5 million premises (passing 22,000 premises per week.), but only 2.2 million of those are currently considered to be ‘Ready for Service‘ by an ISP.
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Kim Johnston, CityFibre Area Manager, said:
Our rollout to date has helped transform Harrogate and Ripon’s digital capabilities for both residents and businesses, making them some of the best-connected towns in Britain. We have almost finished in Harrogate and just have a small amount left to do along Otley Road.
Digital infrastructure has become the cornerstone of modern day-life, and the people we have spoken to say they are already reaping the benefits of lightning fast and more reliable broadband.
We are working closely with North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) in this area as we understand that the footways on Otley Road have undergone recent resurfacing. With the council’s agreement, as part of CityFibre’s essential development works, the footways will be restored, including repairs to defects that NYCC were due to carry out.”
At this point it’s worth remembering that Harrogate, Ripon and Knaresborough originally formed part of TalkTalk’s planned FTTP build under their FibreNational network project, which CityFibre acquired a few short years ago. Naturally, the operator will face some competition from gigabit-capable rivals in urban locations like this (Openreach, Virgin Media etc.) – varying a bit between each area.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Probably a typo Mark but it was FibreNation that CF bought,not FibreNational
As someone who had to put up with Virgin Media as the only fibre provider here in Harrogate, I cannot tell you how happy I am that I can now switch away from them when my contract runs out.
Except you probably can’t.
My experience was of then turning up on the install day and realizing the fibre had been wired to the poll outside the house and left at that.
The poll was too crowded and needed open reach. Fast Forward a year since and it’s still in a nice little reel hanging off the side of the poll.
Recently moved from virgin media to vodafone through cityfibre here in Harrogate. Trenches were dug in april so was beginning to wonder when is was going live. Engineers (kelly) turned up on time and were in and in just ovee an hour. Works well so far
Here is my experience… I replaced Virgin Media with Vodafone, as well. Vodafone didn’t show up for their install appointment, and when I reached them via online chat, Vodafone informed me that they are waiting on CityFibre to do something… Perhaps it’s the same issue that TimTom mentioned?