Cityfibre’s Fibre Optic Network Boosted by Exa Networks and Diva Telecom

Fibre optic infrastructure developer Cityfibre has today announced a new partnership with two business ISPs, Exa Networks and Diva Telecom. Both providers have promise to add around 350 sites to the operators national UK Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) / Ethernet / Leased Line network.

At present Cityfibre are aiming to deploy their ultrafast fibre optic broadband and Ethernet services into as many as 50 UK cities by 2020 (e.g. York, Peterborough, Coventry, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow), which has recently been boosted by their £90m acquisition of KCOM’s UK network assets (here).

The vast majority of their network is focused upon connecting business and public sector sites, except in York and via a legacy FTTH network in Bournemouth where there is some very limited coverage of residential properties.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“Commercialising our national network assets is of paramount importance to us, and so we are very pleased to be adding two key partners to our ranks. Exa and Diva are both highly commercial organisations with great local market knowledge and a hard-earned reputation for delivering value to their customers. This is the beginning of our journey together.”

Mark Cowgill, Co-Founder of Exa Networks, said:

“Using CityFibre’s pure fibre infrastructure will enable us to offer our customers best-in-class connectivity services. As a UK leader in providing internet services to the education sector, we understand the crucial importance of ultra-fast connectivity to schools in the modern age and we anticipate huge demand for our services across CityFibre’s national fibre footprint.”

Apparently Exa Networks have committed 250 new connections in Bradford, while Diva Telecom have offered an initial commitment of 100 connections and most of those will be in Leeds. A mix of business and public sector sites are included in this.