Cityfibre Confirms £117m Rollout of 1Gbps Fibre in Nottingham UPDATE

Fibre optic network developer Cityfibre has today revealed that they intend to invest £117m in order to deploy a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the central England city of Nottingham, which is to be supported by civil engineering firm McCann.

Work on the new network, which aims to “reach of nearly every home and business in the town” (they usually target 85%+ coverage), is due to begin in January 2021 and will probably take a few years to complete.

The deployment forms part of the operator’s wider £4bn investment plan (here), which currently aims to cover around 1 million premises by the end of 2021 and then 8 million across 100+ cities and towns (c.30% of the UK) – the latter target is expected to be “substantially completed” by the end of 2025.

As usual the work will no doubt benefit from that fact that Cityfibre already has a Dark Fibre style network in the city (one of those they acquired from KCOM in 2015), which since 2017 has been used to serve local businesses (e.g. those based in Arnold, Daybrook, Woodthorpe, Forest Fields, Hyson Green, Nottingham Trent University, Queens Medical Centre, West Bridgford and Clifton Boulevard etc.).

Dominika Walker, CityFibre’s City Manager for Nottingham, said:

“I’m delighted to be part of an organisation that is doing everything it can to transform towns and cities across the country. Our digital infrastructure plays a crucial role in growing and protecting local economies, even more so during these unprecedented times when connectivity has proven vital to residents, businesses and public services alike.”

The catch here is that Nottingham is already a fairly competitive market for gigabit-capable networks, thanks to Virgin Media’s extensive coverage and Openreach’s on-going deployment of FTTP. On top of that Hyperoptic, Glide, OFNL and the ITS Technology Group have also deployed full fibre services in different parts of the city.

Suffice to say that Cityfibre and their ISP partners – TalkTalk and Vodafone – will have to fight hard to dent the local market.

UPDATE 7th Jan 2021

As expected the work has now commenced in the Bilborough, Leen Valley and Wollaton areas. The first homes and businesses will be able to connect to the network from May 2021, with works projected to be largely completed by December 2025.