Cityfibre UK Begins 1Gbps FTTH Broadband Build in Leicester UPDATE
Cityfibre’s civil engineering teams appear to have begun their deployment of a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) based broadband ISP network in the East Midlands city of Leicester (England) this month, with locals in the Belgrave and some central areas reporting lots of duct and trenching work.
Little is known about the project in Leicester, although in 2017 Cityfibre built a limited Dark Fibre network in the city to help connect local businesses (here). The latest deployment will no doubt aim to extend outwards from that in order to reach more than 85% of local premises (homes and businesses).
As usual this forms part of the operator’s wider £4bn private investment plan (here), which aims to deploy “full fibre” broadband to cover around 1 million UK premises by the end of 2021, before potentially reaching their ambition of 8 million premises across 100+ cities and towns by the end of 2025 or later (c.30% of the UK).
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In terms of competition, much of the local market is already covered by Virgin Media’s gigabit-capable broadband network, while Openreach has a few tiny FTTP patches and a modest deployment of slower hybrid fibre G.fast technology. As such Cityfibre could soon become the city’s 2nd largest provider of gigabit full fibre services to local homes. Credits to Jamie for spotting.
UPDATE 16th June 2020:
Cityfibre has confirmed that their local contractor on this build is the Granemore Group and they’re investing £80m to complete the work. The project is expected to take up to 5 years to complete, which suggests an end date of around late 2025.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Any idea which subcontractor is doing the Civils/install works?
I was wondering the same thing – usually its included in the post
Leicestershire is soooo far behind most with regard FTTP. Unless your lucky enough to have virgin very few places have FTTP.
Recently moved to ibstock and a 2012/2013 development, half got FTTP for some reason the other half didn’t. No sign of virgin either.
An FTTPoD quote came back at £11k Inc VAT
There’s over 100 Regions/areas below Leicestershire and they don’t have the benefit of 60%+ Virgin cable coverage.
While that doesn’t help those that don’t have a decent connection, I’m sceptical that this roll out will help that many of them rather provide more choice for those that already do.
I dont consider Virgin’s Leicester service particularly good, the original cable network build in the city was not designed for broadband, and the homes passed per node is much higher than the average, so as a result of this congestion problems are very common place. You may get a few hundred mbit/sec at 4 in the morning, but peak time could well be hitting ADSL sort of speeds. Even in parts of the suburbs that are not student areas, the speeds are all over the place.
Cityfibre is also rolling out in Inverness. They started in April.
Contractor is GCU Ltd
GCU is in Inverness – do you know for Leicester?
GCU is in Inverness – any idea if they are doing the work in Leicester as well?
Job was that a Bellway development by any chance? We brought one in Loughborough that was served by nothing except ADSL for many years. Luckily we’ve moved to Shepshed now and have the choice of G.Fast or Virgin.
Apologies. Should of read Jon
Yes a Bellway development.
Pushed them since I have moved in along with BT and virgin but hit a brick all.
FTTC gave me a sync a por 25/30mb.
Currently using a 4g router which works faster
Leicester seems to be very much out of favour with Openreach with the only FTTP on new developments and they appear to have stopped G Fast installs as well.
It does seem rather strange considering the size of the city to not have any Fibre first areas in fact as far as I can remember I do not think even in the wider county area of Leicestershire there has been areas covered with Openreach FTTP other than new builds which none are huge 200 + houses.
I do wonder if its due to Virgin having a large coverage area and have Openreach had info that Gig1 is coming to Leicester soon ? CityFibre did announce that they were going to build a network in Leicester but due to the shape of the Core this is not going to be a big rollout as looks like only goes as far north as Abbey Lane and South as far as StoneyGate so they are left with the real inner city much of which is terrace housing lower income households.
Looking at the spurs that Cityfibre have put in I expect the next areas to get covered will be Narborough Road, West Cotes/Fosse area
Those areas you mentioned are a lot of students and they will spend on broadband, so probably not the worst placement for vodafone who will be the prime ISP for this.
I am curious given you know where these works are been carried out Jamie, do you have the idea of all the spurs locations?
Also I do agree on it been odd that Openreach have not a single FTTP publicly announced area for the entire county and city, it is odd.
Is this purely covering the centre of Leicester or are they pushing out into Rushey Mead, Thurmaston and Syston?
Archie- This will quite possibly go out to Rushey Mead area but do not think it will be as far as Syston or Thurmaston as looks like limit may be Sainsburys on Troon way.
The announcement that CityFibre were covering Leicester was 22nd August 2017 so not far off 3 years to the main trenching started, although the Core network fibres have been going in since the start of the year they appear to have a POP around New Walk, King Street as that is where all the fibre appears to go to with SSE providing the main backhaul around to London and Birmingham
@Jamie thanks!
The 2017 announcement wasn’t the same, that was for their Dark Fibre business connectivity and has already completed. The new FTTH roll-out project to homes was first announced in late 2018 with Vodafone and Leicester was only added to that plan in 2019:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/07/cityfibre-confirm-14-uk-towns-and-cities-for-phase-2-ftth-rollout.html
Of the two announced today (Derby/Leicester), how long was it from announcement to diggers in the path?
Ironically i found out about this last week when the Mayor after I asked why he hasnt sent money to openreach to get us on their rollout. He pointed a Leicester Mercury article which announced it.
Now I already know that cityfibre already have a fibre ring in the city, used for business services, it is actually on my street and I today could order a business service if I wanted to, but the monthly cost is very high with a 3 year commit, so I decided to wait for this expansion work to be carried out. I would be very surprised given my proximity to the existing fibre if my road was not included in the residential service.
The bit of the article that alarms me though, is the completion date of 2025, 80 million pounds suggests it isnt going to be huge part of the city covered, probably the bits nearest to the city centre, however is it really going to take them 5 years to complete Leicester? that seems a very slow pace to get it down.
I live in Leicester West not far from Fosse area and not that far from town side of Narborough road, the existing ring passes by on my street.