Cityfibre Start £80m FTTP Broadband Rollout in Brighton and Hove
CityFibre UK has today announced the start of their £80 million project to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the East Sussex city of Brighton & Hove, which is expected to take between 4 to 5 years to fully complete. The city is home to around 300,000 people.
As usual the work forms part of their wider £4bn investment programme (here and here), which currently aims to cover around 1 million premises by the end of 2021 (they’ve already covered 500,000 premises) 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.
Construction of the new network, which has just commenced in the Bevendean area, is being handled by civil engineering firm Lanes-i. The same company has also been contracted by CityFibre to help deliver a number of their other builds (e.g. Chatham & Gillingham, Crawley and Horsham, Eastbourne).
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Anne Krause, CityFibre’s City Manager for Brighton & Hove, said:
“It is exciting to be part of bringing a first-class Full Fibre network to the vibrant and diverse area of Brighton & Hove. We are building future-proof infrastructure to support the digital needs of residents, both now and in the future, ensuring that the area can continue to embrace digital developments at home, work and in our leisure time as data consumption grows.
The investment also comes at a critical time of economic recovery. Next generation Full Fibre connectivity can drive innovation and productivity, ultimately giving businesses the platform they need to realise their growth ambitions, while also creating the conditions for new start-up activity and investment. We look forward to working with Brighton & Hove Council, residents, businesses and the wider community to harness the power of Full Fibre.”
Phélim MacCafferty, Brighton & Hove City Council Leader, added:
“It’s great news that the city will soon have access to faster, more reliable internet connection speeds. Known as full fibre, this represents real progress, not just for our residents but it will play an incredibly important part in supporting the local economy as we plan our recovery from the pandemic.
Working with our partners at the Greater Brighton Economic Board, we have been pushing for faster and better internet connection for a number of years. This is a significant investment, and, while there may be some disruption during installation, we have been assured by CityFibre that this will be kept to a minimum.”
The benefits of full fibre will be important for the city’s economy in both the short and long term and we’re looking forward to working with CityFibre on this exciting roll-out.”
As usual CityFibre won’t have the area all to themselves, with the majority of the city having already been covered by Virgin Media’s own gigabit-capable network. Brighton was also one of the first cities listed for Openreach’s rival FTTP rollout (the area already has a lot of their ultrafast G.fast technology), but so far they don’t appear to have done all that much (this may be about to change as local plans show a big deployment looming).
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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Meanwhile, the surrounding towns near Brighton have no Virgin, No FTTP, No Altnet and even though a few are listed as a market town precisely 0 movement has happened since being announced last year.
The wait continues…
Meanwhile people continue to misunderstand how businesses install infrastructure and how they need to operate to survive.
I guess you are from the local area then?
I am salty, but it’s frustrating when your town is on a market list for FTTP and nothing happens for a year and Virgin put 20 cabinets up in your town but do nothing about it for 2 years now apart from watch the cabinets go a slightly lighter shade of grey.
25/4 at best FTTC broadband grates on you when the end is in sight and literally 20-30 minute drive you have a small city with Virgin/G Fast/BT FTTP and now City fiber..
I’m in an area been on the list for FTTP since 2018 yet nothing has happened, we have 1.5mbps ADSL max available.
I also used to live in Crawley but back in Birmingham for the time being.
Which surrounding towns?
Virgin is available in Portslade, Southwick, Shoreham, there’s FTTP in Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath. The area has pretty good coverage.
I thought Worthing with OR/VM/Cityfibre was simply due to the early announcements. But all three again in Brighton. Interesting that Cityfibre are still confident to proceed now in a OR in progress area as there are other parts that will not be covered short covered by OR. It is going to be congested at the top of those poles on Bevedean.
Openrech already started the survey stage in Hove and Portslade area. The first areas will be live in the second quarter 21/22.
Out of curiosity where did you find this information? I live in Hove so it’s exciting for me.
i’m on the rottingdean exchange, which is also part of brighton. are you allowed to say if that will also be surveyed any time soon
thanks
PS virgin has been in woodingdean and saltdean for a few years, every week, there are posts on the local pages saying virgin is down etc etc. so would be a good opportunity to gain a load of virgin customers
I live in Mile Oak area and there are Openreach vans EVERYWHERE at the moment – hoping FTTP isn’t too far away 🙂
Nice, I live in Hove and can’t wait to leave virgin media. At last a viable alternative.
Hi Adam, I’m involved in the process. Sorry I can’t give more information.
Be interesting to see what these ‘big plans’ detail – links anywhere?
Anyone know when Openreach or City Fibre will do Brighton proper? Openreach have done the area north of the Brighton to Lewes trainline, but not to the south…
Virgin is fine for me other than upload speeds are not competitive with FTTP rollout.