Fujitsu UK to Build Sky, TalkTalk and CityFibre 1Gb FTTH Network in York

CityFibre have unsurprisingly announced that Fujitsu has been chosen as the build partner for the first deployment phase of their new city-wide Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) broadband network for homes and businesses in York (England), which is being conducted alongside Sky Broadband (BSkyB) and TalkTalk.

The announcement is hardly surprising given that CityFibre and Fujitsu announced a general engineering agreement all the way back in April 2012, which at the time was said to have an estimated contract value worth £50 million (initially). Prior to that the two companies had already worked together as Fujitsu built CityFibre’s original 103km fibre optic network around the City of York.

CityFibre Statement

Fujitsu was selected for its in-depth knowledge and experience of delivering networks for Tier 1 Operators in the UK and abroad, as well as its ability to build networks at scale. Network planning is well advanced and the first technology and construction activities aimed at optimising deployment speed, cost and quality are commencing in late October.

Fujitsu will undertake all of the build activities including detailed network planning, civil and network construction, testing and interconnection of the FTTP network.

It’s important to stress that the first phase involves deploying the new 1000Mbps (Megabits per second) cable network out to reach 20,000 homes, which is being supported by an initial commitment of £5m each from TalkTalk and Sky Broadband. This represents only a quarter of the work that would be needed to achieve full city-wide coverage and thus more funding will be required to hit the eventual goal.

The first customers are currently expected to go live in 2015 and tentative plans exist for a similar deployment in two further cities, although these have yet to be announced. Further details can be found in our original news item (here) and this recent Cityfibre interview (here).