Cityfibre’s UK Full Fibre Broadband Rollout Reaches 25000 Premises
The latest independent data has estimated that Cityfibre’s new £2.5bn project to roll-out a 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network (Vodafone Gigafast Broadband), which aims to cover 5 million premises across 37 UK cities and towns by the end of 2024 (here), has so far reached 25,000 premises.
The deployment work has now begun in most of the ten cities that were initially announced as part of Phase One (listed below), which is being supported by ISP Vodafone and aims to cover a minimum of 1 million UK homes by the end of 2021. In that sense Cityfibre are still in the early ramping-up phase and they’ll need to hire more engineers (5,000 expected – most via third-party contractors) before we see how much progress they can really make.
Nevertheless over the past few months we have witnessed some initial services going live in a few areas within a handful of the initial cities (particularly Aberdeen, Milton Keynes and Peterborough). The latest modelling from Thinkbroadband‘s database suggests that the service may now be available to order (live) by around 25,445 premises.
The Gigafast Broadband packages from Vodafone currently cost from £28 per month for an unlimited 100Mbps (symmetric speed) service on an 18 month contract, including free installation (you also get a very good wireless router in the bundle). This then rises to just £48 per month for their top 900Mbps (Gigabit) tier, which is significantly cheaper and faster than anything Openreach (BT) could offer via their own FTTP.
We’ll keep a watch on Cityfibre’s pace throughout 2019 and see how it improves by the end of this year.
Current 10 Phase One Areas by Order of Announcement
Milton Keynes (£40m)
Aberdeen (£40m)
Peterborough (£30m)
Edinburgh (£100m)
Coventry (£60m)
Huddersfield (£30m)
Stirling (£10m)
Cambridge (£20m)
Leeds (£120m)
Southend-on-Sea (£35m)The 27 Future Areas
Bath
Batley
Bournemouth (already has a legacy FTTH network to c.20k premises from Cityfibre)
Bracknell
Bradford
Bristol
Crawley
Derby
Dewsbury
Doncaster
Glasgow
Halifax
Harrogate
Leicester
Maidenhead
Manchester
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Northampton
Nottingham
Reading
Rotherham
Sheffield
Slough
Southampton
Swindon
Wakefield
Worthing
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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My friend sent me a photo yesterday of the trenching that had just started outside his house on the other side of Peterborough. Interested to see how long it takes for that work to translate into service availability.
Patiently checking roadworks.org to see when it gets over to my side of town.
I would be interested to hear how long from the digging process to the actual live connection at the premises also.
I myself like you Simon, keep checking Roadworks as a daily ritual.
GL on getting your street ping up!
They finished doing my street in December (I live in Kincorth Aberdeen). I got it installed and working on the 14th of January. So I’d say around a month.
@Kenny thanks for that information, they are now doing my manor, but sadly the opposite side like SimonR is experiencing.
What sort of speeds are you getting *package depending and if wired/wireless?
I went for the 500 package. I’m glad I did because I’ve yet to see a download that fully utilizes my connection. The closest is PSN which comes down between 40MB/s & 50MB/s. When I do a speed test DU Meter reports is as 64MB/s down and up. I went for the 500 package. I’m glad I did because I’ve yet to see a download that fully utilizes my connection. The closest is PSN which comes down between 40MB/s & 50MB/s. When I do a speed test DU Meter reports is as 64MB/s down and up. I just did a speed test for you.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/8058487442
@mark No idea what happened there. For some reason it wouldn’t post then it double posted in the one post. Go figure. 🙂
@Mark I nearly forgot. Mine is all wired. I did a speed test through wireless on the 5GHz band. Here are the results.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/8058563673
@Kenny
Many thanks for the various speed tests, handy to know the 5GHz is also not doing too bad.
Kudos to you.
In Milton Keynes, they are using BT’s ductwork rather than microtrenching. Mine is set to be installed tomorrow (no intentions of taking the service though).
Thanks Andy, that’s good to know that this is a choice.
Here I have VM on front road, and Openreach to the rear of the property (pole fed)
Who do they use for there fttp installation