1Gbps Cityfibre Home Broadband Goes Live in Cambridge UK

Full fibre network builder Cityfibre, which is currently in the process of investing £20m to build a new Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network that will reach around 60,000 premises in Cambridge via UK ISP partner Vodafone (here), appears to have put their network live with the first customers getting a connection.

The local roll-out represents a significant expansion of the operator’s existing 44km long metro Dark Fibre network, which was initially only being used to serve local businesses and public sector sites in certain parts of the city. Work on this build began in May 2019 and is due to complete by the end of 2021.

Under the original plan Cityfibre were due to connect their first residential customers in Cambridge during the summer but this was lately delayed into the autumn window. The latest independent data from Thinkbroadband confirms that the first homes have now finally gone live on Vodafone’s related Gigafast Broadband packages (these cost from just £28 per month), although an official announcement has not yet been made.

The development means that Cambridge joins Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Coventry, Huddersfield, Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Stirling as some of the first Phase One cities where Cityfibre’s new FTTH network has now gone live for customer connections. Overall Cityfibre’s roll-out has so far reached around 141,000 premises (estimated) since it began at the very end of last year and they continue to ramp-up the deployment.

As usual all of this effort forms part of the operator’s wider £2.5bn plan to reach 1 million premises across the United Kingdom by the end of 2021 (Phase One) and then 5 million by the end of 2025 via 60 UK cities and towns (here). Cityfibre’s biggest rival in the city will be Virgin Media, which can already cover nearly 90% of premises (a similar coverage level to Cityfibre’s target) and is due to start offering 1Gbps speeds by 2021 (here).

We should also point out that Openreach’s ultrafast FTTP network reaches about 6% of local premises and their 330Mbps capable hybrid fibre G.fast technology covers 32%. Likewise the area is home to another full fibre ISP called Cambridge Fibre. Suffice to say that there’s a fair bit of local competition for Cityfibre to tackle and they’ve so far built most of their coverage across the city’s north east side.