Cityfibre Start £40m Swindon Build of 1Gbps FTTP Broadband
Network builder Cityfibre UK have just kicked off the construction phase of their £40m project to deploy a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTH) broadband network across the Wiltshire town of Swindon, which is being supported by civil engineering firm VolkerSmart Technologies.
The first homes and businesses to benefit from this new network will be in the Gorse Hill area, primarily those premises on the east side of the Techno Trading Estate. The operator already has a Dark Fibre network in the town, which as usual will help to form the foundation for their new deployment.
As usual this rollout 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.
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Neil Madle, CityFibre’s City Manager for Swindon, said:
“Swindon’s residents’ digital future is just around the corner. Work is now underway and that is something to be celebrated. Full Fibre broadband will help households access all the latest entertainment at lightning speed, but the benefits are far deeper than that – from enabling smart home technology to giving people the freedom to work from home with ease.
“The investment also comes at a critical time for Swindon’s forward-thinking business community. Next generation Full Fibre connectivity can drive innovation and productivity, ultimately giving businesses the platform, they need to realise their growth ambitions. And it won’t just improve business locally – it will also help businesses take their products or services to an international audience.”
However, Cityfibre won’t be the only gigabit-capable operator in town. Cable broadband provider Virgin Media already covers most of the area, while Openreach, Glide and OFNL also have some reasonable coverage in different parts (Openreach has quite a large deployment of G.fast too, although that is a slower and less reliable technology).
At present the operator hasn’t announced which of their retail ISP partners will be delivering a service to local homes, although both Vodafone (Gigafast Broadband) and TalkTalk seem likely to be the future options.
Regular readers will recall that Swindon has an awkward history when it comes to broadband provision. A few years ago the town used public investment to help support a new fixed wireless network, only for Openreach and Virgin Media to return and plug much of the remaining gap.
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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How less reliable is GFast?
You can easily find out for yourself, but it’s likely you already know the difference between G.fast and FTTP. Another one of your lame questions here.
If you disagree with what’s written in the article, then say so, and state your reasons.
Wow! 14 minutes.
I ask because I cannot find any figures. Often quoted as eg. 99.999% (five nines) in an industry. Do these numbers exist that would reflect the difference in local end technology?
Gfast was a sticking plaster on congested fttc cabs, never designed to be used everywhere. It’s so the old boss could get sports away from his old mate at the helm of sky. Nothing like a but if tax funded school boy banter
G.fast is a rate-adaptive technology, like VDSL. It therefore depends on all sorts of things, even down to the weather.
To avoid interference with ADSL and VDSL, G.fast only uses very high frequencies. However these are also the frequencies which suffer the most attenuation over copper. That is, they die away quickly with distance.
If you live right next door to your cabinet, then G.fast will work just fine. If you live 200-250 metres away, you are borderline for G.fast service. Speed and reliability are likely to be very poor – even though at such range VDSL users will typically get a solid 80/20M or very close to it.
We know all about GFast, I simply asked what the numbers are to show it is less reliable.
@TheFacts: If you are so desperate about G.fast why don’t you try it out for yourself? Do you seriously still want G.fast to be deployed? Even BT has pretty much stopped the deployment of new G.fast, and there are cases where it also now replaced it with FTTP!
If you disagree with the article or other posters, then say so, and explain your reasons why.