CityFibre Acquires 140km Metro Fibre Optic Network in Coventry UK

Fibre optic infrastructure developer CityFibre have signed a strategic partnership with Coventry City Council in England, which has enabled the firm to acquire Coventry’s 140km metro fibre network (Coventry CORE). The network will now be upgraded and extended in order to make broadband speeds of 1000Mbps available to local businesses.

At present the network, which was first commissioned by Coventry City Council in 2007 (built by Optilan), is primarily used to serve almost 300 buildings (e.g. mostly public sector areas like council offices, schools and community centres). Apparently all of these will continue to receive long-term connectivity, except that CityFibre now intends to make more extensive use of the network.

It’s understood that the demand-led upgrade work, which will transform Coventry into a “Gigabit City“, is due to start during the summer 2014 period and will mirror the firms similar efforts to roll-out an open fibre optic network in York and Peterborough. The Coventry CORE will be CityFibre’s largest metro network and increases the company’s national network footprint by around 50%.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“The rise of the Gigabit City represents a step-change in the evolution of digital connectivity as significant as the shift from dial-up to broadband. As a Gigabit City, Coventry will position itself at the heart of the UK economy as the technological revolution continues to gather pace. CityFibre is dedicated to bringing world leading, lightning fast connectivity to cities across the UK, boosting the economy and revolutionising online experience.”

Cllr Damian Gannon, Strategic Finance and Resources, said:

“Ultrafast gigabit speed connectivity is vital for Coventry businesses to enable them to compete and succeed not just on the national, but also on the international stage. As a Gigabit City, Coventry can now set itself alongside the most digitally advanced locations around the world and we look forward to the numerous social and economic advantages that such a status will bring; driving economic investment and catalysing business start-ups.”

As usual CityFibre has already launched a pre-registration campaign called Gig Up Coventry, which hopes to encourage around 1,000 businesses to register their interest in gigabit speed connectivity (note: an ISP for the end-user service has yet to be selected). In addition, CityFibre has also committed its full participation in the local “Super-Connected Cities” programme worth £3 million to Coventry businesses, which offers grants worth up to £3,000 to local firms that want to get a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) service installed.

No doubt Sky Broadband and TalkTalk, which recently agreed to help Cityfibre roll-out a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband service to homes in York (here), will be keeping a close eye on these developments for their future expansion plans (assuming the York experiment is successful and that’s still far from certain, especially given the strong local competition from BT and Virgin Media).