CityFibre UK to Commercialise Ultrafast Fibre Optic Network in Bristol

Cityfibre, which runs a growing number of ultrafast Gigabit capable fibre optic (FTTP) broadband networks across UK cities, has today announced that they’re starting work to commercialise 82km of pure fibre network assets in Bristol (England). But they’ll have some local competition.

Apparently the local infrastructure was largely acquired as part of Cityfibre’s recent £90m grab of KCOM’s UK network assets (excluding Hull and East Yorkshire), which was announced last month (here). Cityfibre now hopes to commercialise the local network and expand its reach to more businesses.

In order to achieve this Cityfibre has hooked-up with local ISP Triangle Networks, which claims to already have “hundreds of existing customers in the city” and has promised to bring in a minimum of 100 new customers to the network by the end of 2016.

The Bristol: Gigabit City network will be officially launched at an event in February 2016, at which point a city-wide marketing campaign will begin with the aim of attracting more businesses in order to register their interest. Cityfibre may then extend the fibre optic network into areas where local demand is strongest.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“We’re delighted to be able to announce Bristol as our next Gigabit City project and to be working with Triangle Networks, experts and innovators in business connectivity, to ensure its success. Bristol is already a UK leader in digital innovation, but its business community has not yet had the opportunity to take full-advantage. This project provides that opportunity and I could think of nowhere more exciting to begin our latest project.

Less than a month after announcing our acquisition of KCOM’s networks, we have begun to commercialise them. As the UK’s largest alternative infrastructure provider, this is the first of many new Gigabit City launches to come on our expanded footprint of 36 cities across the UK.”

Paul Anslow, MD ofTriangle Networks, said:

“We’re hugely excited to be CityFibre’s Gigabit City launch partner on this project. We have been watching demand for ultra-fast services grow exponentially in recent years and this project has the potential to unlock a tide of demand for faster, more resilient and more affordable services.

As this is a pure fibre network, Triangle will be launching services that are ‘Gigabit-speed-as-standard’, far faster than those possible on ‘Fibre to the cabinet’ networks that are still restricted by the limitations of copper wires. This enables businesses to stop concerning themselves with bandwidth restrictions and start to make the most of new ways of working that will improve their experience and drive the bottom line.”

However one slight thorn in Cityfibre’s plan might be that they’re not the only such network operator in town. The city is already well covered by BT and Virgin Media’s admittedly much slower hybrid-fibre broadband services and then there’s BNet (Bristol Network), which a 76km long ducting and fibre communications network.

Last year the Bristol City Council gave its approval to a 20-year deal with two alternative network ISPs, Net Support UK and ITS Technology Group, which will see the city’s fibre optic BNet broadband infrastructure being used to help connect local premises (here). Both ISPs intend to use the new network in order to deliver “ultrafast” (100Mbps+) broadband services across the city, which will help to form part of the wider GigaBit Bristol (Super Connected Cities) programme.

The BNet approach is essentially a commercialisation of existing infrastructure, which mirrors what Cityfibre appear to be attempting. However Cityfibre believes that its deal with Triangle Networks will put them in a stronger position, although it’s interesting to see such competition as previously the operator has tended to focus on cities where such rivals were not usually present to such a significant degree.