CityFibre Presentation Talks Wholesale, Take-up and Future UK Broadband Plans
The Strategy Director for 10Gbps capable full fibre UK broadband operator CityFibre, Clayton Nash, has given a new lecture to members of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) that reveals some interesting details about the company’s network roll-out, wholesale pricing, take-up and future plans.
The network, which has long aspired to reach up to 8 million UK premises (c.30% of the UK) and in late January 2026 suffered more redundancies (here), currently covers 4.7 million UK premises (4.5m RFS) and recently revealed (here) that their take-up had grown rapidly to total 848,000 customers (up by 64% from 518,000 at the same time last year).
The new lecture by Clayton Nash, which is available as a 1 hour+ YouTube video below, doesn’t say too much that we don’t already know about CityFibre’s plans. But it does include some information that we haven’t really seen being articulated much in public before and is thus worth watching.
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For example, Clayton’s slides state that CityFibre’s wholesale full fibre (FTTP) broadband products are around “40%” cheaper than Openreach’s comparable products, which varies across the tiers. At speeds of 160Mbps, CityFibre is shown to be 24% cheaper, while at 1000Mbps (1Gbps) it’s 37% and for Multi-Gigabit this falls back 25%.
However, it’s also worth remembering that CityFibre’s tiers also offer symmetric speeds, while Openreach’s uploads are currently significantly slower, so cost isn’t the only factor to consider. The lecture also offers an interesting overview of how much network capacity they’ll need in the future.
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The lecture also touches on customer take-up, which shows that CityFibre is now home to “above 900,000 customers” and will “hit a million fairly soon“. Clayton says CityFibre currently has a take-up rate of about 22% (they’re using the RFS premises figure for this), which they say compares will with the c.15% take-up at many other altnets (CityFibre currently expects to exceed 30% penetration by the end of 2026).
On the subject of consolidation, which recently saw CityFibre lose out to VMO2’s parents in the battle for Netomnia (here), Clayton confirms that the operator still “intend to kind of work” their way through the above list of alternative networks and “pick up a number of these altnet entities” in order to help them reach “8 to 10 to 12 million homes” in the future.
You can view the full lecture from the IET Anglian Coastal Network below.
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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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If I was making a wish list then I’d like to see CityFibre make the critical care level available to business multigig services, and have a bit of a refresh of their Ethernet offerings. Other than that I’m a very happy customer in the locations we have them.
In order to stay in the game, CityFibre need to snap up Hyperoptic AND Community Fibre. They need the London footprint, which would put them way ahead of VM’s fibre rollout in London.
Just as long as VMO2 don’t swoop in with a rival offer as soon as CityFibre express an interest as they did with Netomnia…..
Indeed this is the risk if the CMA ignores the existing problem, VM will just have a license of doing uncompetitive takeovers.
Telfonica have said they would consider additional aquisitions to help VMO2 compete with BT.
It’s a pity that CityFibre seems to have moved away from pricing parity with their retail partners to offering significant discount to a chosen few. It’s difficult to compete when these retailers are selling for less to customers (with VAT) than what we’re paying CityFibre at wholesale.
I suppose than when you don’t have one hand tide behind your back by a USO and can ignore 70% (at least) of the country, and are owned by investors happy to see you continually haemorrhage cash, it is quite easy to be “40% (sic)” cheaper than your competitors.
Actually building and running the only truly national network and doing so in a responsible and sensible manner is quite another thing.
When you’re building from scratch and you’re up against an incumbent monopoly with huge pre-existing capital strength having a better product AND being cheaper is a must, far from ‘quite easy’ as we have seen with the many failed attempts.
I wish they would roll out across the entire UK. They claim they are a UK provider but dont have any coverage at all in N.Ireland or other parts.
Buying Fibrus would solve the NI issue.
@Mike D: The Fibrus Network, although widespread, tends to be mostly available in country areas, like large villages and small towns, therefore City Fibre would need to do a lot of Network build to reach the majority of the population in Northern lreland. Very unlikely to happen with their present position, and given the general economic climate, i would have thought.
Seems like a lot of artistic licence used for these slides and the presentation. As a CP (named in the presentation) I can say this isn’t all true, or doesn’t work as described in practise.
How about their contractors who are too lazy to get up a stable and newish BT pole to do the fibre drop to a customers house instead of refusing because a dyke with 2 inches of water is on other side of the vegetation. Funny how in 30 years, no BT engineer has refused to go up the pole and manage to do a fibre drop, whether older pole or newer one.
Absolute clown of a company. Couldn’t even send a cherry picker van when asked. Wonder how many other potential customers lost because 3rd party couldn’t be bothered and hiding behind health and safety. A chilly morning, but no ice, snow or wind.
Unlike you to praise anything BT-related, especially the quality of their infrastructure! 😉
I always give a balanced view in my opinion. Whilst I believe BT have dragged their feet over symmetric and been deploying XGS-PON far too long now in new areas where Altnets were XGS-PON, not everything is negative about BT. They are quicker to resolve faults, and I’ve never had nonsense from a BT Engineer about climbing a perfectly stable pole just for the purpose of plugging a connectorised cable into a CBT.
First time I’ve heard of City Fibre contractors refusing to climb a pole because of a dyke, at least on on ISPreview anyway! 🙂
It’s hard to believe but some contractors have a rule that forbid any work within 5m of water. That is streams, lakes, rivers or sea.
That rule applies regardless of climbing the pole or using a MEWP. Some engineers disregard it and others take it to the absurd.
This rule resulted as a consequence of a open reach engineer attempting to get a cable across a river and drowning.
It’s highly possible that the managers have forbidden the engineers to climb the pole and the consequences are not worth it to disregard instructions.
2″ of water with grass reeds behind big bushes. The ladders on a non public road.
Cityfibre paid for all the cables on 8 other feeder poles all by side of the shallow dyke. Feeds one house. They could have used a cherry picker van (crane on roof) but engineer refused. A river could understand,but a cherry picker van still gets round it.
I had planned to go to this presentation. So pleased this item has provided a link. Whilst Clayton Nash is marketing rather than ‘engineering’ I wanted ask why City Fibre’s network design requires so much street furniture – small green cabinets, from what I see (in the small village where I live 5 if not 6 cabinets) BT/OR as they fibre-up an area they remove some, not all street furniture.
BT/OR don’t remove cabints as they still have people on FTTC.
There’s only so far you can blow a fibre. You can put the stuff that’s in the cabinets in an underground chamber but only if you own it and there’s space. On my street OR are using the chambers so CF need cabs.
I would like to see CityFibre in Levenmouth and Kennoway area in Fife. Because Openreach at the moment asymmetrical where CityFibre is symmetrical
It would be nice if CityFibre would finish their build out in Edinburgh.
They seemed to stop rolling out after the debacle of the mess they made of damaging a bridge they didn’t have permission from the Council to work on, and causing months of traffic chaos in that area.
Reminder here:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/03/cityfibre-face-trouble-in-edinburgh-as-full-fibre-build-breaks-bridge.html