Cityfibre Adds Sunderland to UK FTTP Broadband Rollout Plan

Cityfibre has today announced that they’ve added the coastal city of Sunderland (Tyne and Wear), which is home to around 175,000 people, to their rollout of a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network. The project will cost £62m and aims to reach “nearly every home and business.”

The deployment forms part of the operator’s wider £4bn investment programme (here and 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 (depending upon how they define ‘substantially’).

The move to include Sunderland into their plan is perhaps not an unexpected one, partly because Cityfibre have already committed to invest £50m in order to cover 103,000 premises in the nearby city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. On top of that they’re also investing £50m to tackle North Tyneside, which exists in the same general area.

Apparently detailed planning is already underway and the work is expected to commence mid-year (2021). We don’t yet know which contractor has been picked to deliver this project.

Jason Legget, CityFibre’s Local City Manager, said:

“It’s exciting to look to the future and what our £62m Sunderland Full Fibre network build investment will bring. We are working in close partnership with Sunderland City Council to transform the area’s digital infrastructure, ensuring that the digital needs of those working and living in the region are met now, and in the future.”

As usual you can’t enter an area like this without facing some local competition from gigabit-capable rivals, particularly from Virgin Media, which has already covered the vast majority of the area. Openreach, Hyperoptic and OFNL also have a tiny bit of FTTP, but nothing to write home about.