Four New ISPs join CityFibre’s UK Gigabit Broadband Network

Cityfibre has today announced that four new UK ISPs – Air Broadband, Highnet, Triangle Networks and Trunk Networks – have joined their growing national 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to launch consumer services, which complements existing deals with Vodafone, TalkTalk, Giganet and Zen Internet etc.

As most people know Cityfibre has a major £4bn investment programme (here and here), which currently aims to cover around 1 million premises by the end of 2021 with their gigabit-capable “full fibre” network 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.

The new network has already won significant ISP (wholesale) support from several major residential focused providers (above) and today they’ve added four smaller providers. On top of that there’s also a slew of ISPs that sell their business connectivity solutions, but those represent a different side of the market.

As we’ve said before, the ability to attract support from established ISPs is a key element of any alternative network’s future success, especially those with large-scale ambitions. At the same time those ISPs will, at least in some locations, no longer feel beholden to using Openreach’s rival products. On the other hand, it can be a slow and costly process for ISPs to fully adapt to a new network platform.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“CityFibre has always set out to be the spark that will drive competition in the market – at both the infrastructure and retail layer. As we welcome four more partners to our growing full fibre networks, we are seeing that competition brought to life. In just over two years, we have created a competitive ecosystem for ISPs that will result in greater choice for ISPs, better services for consumers and a better outcome for the entire country.”

However, one issue that may crop up for consumers is the patch-work approach to availability, which could create confusion (i.e. just because Cityfibre’s FTTP exists in an area, doesn’t mean to say all of their supporting ISPs will be able to offer it). Some of this can’t be helped as it takes time to adapt to new networks, while existing agreements may prevent all ISPs being able to gain immediate access into certain areas.

For example, Air Broadband will initially only offer services in Cambridge, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds and Lowestoft. In Scotland, HighNet will launch consumer services in Inverness before expansion across other Scottish markets. In the South of England, Triangle Networks will be offering its services in Milton Keynes, while Trunk Networks will begin marketing services in Eastbourne and Worthing before adding new locations across the South.

We look forward to seeing what kind of new packages will soon become available.