CityFibre Connect First Customers to 1Gbps Aberdeen Fibre Optic Network

Fibre optic network builder CityFibre has today announced that the first business customers have now gone live on their new 1000Mbps capable fibre optic broadband (FTTP) network in the city of Aberdeen (Aberdeen Core), which has also just completed the first city centre construction phase.

The project was first announced in September 2014 and aims to reach more than 6,000 businesses, as well as hundreds of public sector sites (e.g. schools, universities, libraries, hospitals and government buildings etc.). The first areas to go live were around Union Street, Schoolhill and Queens Road.

Initially Cityfibre began its project with support from only one local ISP, Internet for Business, although they’ve now added two more with both Commsworld and Converged Communication Solutions joining the network. Each will be able to offer Gigabit connectivity via an open access wholesale platform.

James Thomas, Operations Director at CityFibre, said:

“CityFibre’s goal remains to provide towns and cities with a future-proof, pure fibre infrastructure to give companies a gigabit speed advantage in a digital world. We’re delighted to have two more significant partners in Commsworld and Converged join the Aberdeen CORE. Together with IFB, they will provide businesses with an increasing choice of next generation connectivity services driving customer value and service take-up throughout the city.”

According to Commsworld, some 26 businesses have already signed up to the service and more are expected to follow. Meanwhile, on the deployment front, the next stage of Cityfibre’s roll-out will focus upon extending into areas including the Harbour, Altens, Tullos, Dyce and the Bridge of Don.

As before the precise network route is being determined by demand from the business community, which can be expressed via the Aberdeen CORE website. Registered businesses will also be checked for eligibility against the government’s Connection Voucher scheme, which offers grants of up to £3,000 to help cover installation costs.

However according to Ofcom, “super-fast” broadband (30Mbps+) connectivity is already available to around two thirds of Aberdeen and most of that is due to BT’s slower FTTC infrastructure (Virgin Media’s cable network is sadly somewhat absent), which is also set to improve over the next 2-3 years.