Cityfibre UK Prep Preston’s £30m FTTP Gigabit Broadband Rollout

CityFibre UK has today announced that they’ve started detailed survey work for another of their planned builds, which will see them invest £30 million to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the Lancashire city of Preston.

As usual the rollout, which should reach “nearly every home and business in the city“, forms part of their £4bn investment programme (here and here). This currently aims to cover around 1 million premises by the end of 2021 (they’ve already done 500,000 premises) and then 8 million across 100+ cities and towns (c.30% of the UK) – the latter target is planned to be “substantially completed” by the end of 2025.

Construction of the new network is planned to start in May 2021 and will then take 3-years to complete (c. May 2024). The local contractor appointed to conduct the build itself is Telent, which are also working alongside Cityfibre in Blackpool and Chester.

Steve Thorpe, CF City Manager for Preston, said:

“Digital connectivity has never been more important. 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. This is particularly vital with us spending more time in our homes than ever.

With our build partners, we will do everything possible to minimise disruption as we begin to roll out this game-changing technology. This project will future-proof Preston and lay the foundations for its digital transformation, whilst enabling vital economic recovery.”

As usual CityFibre’s main local rival in the gigabit-capable broadband space will be Virgin Media, which already covers the majority of Preston. Openreach also has a little FTTP, as well as a fair bit more of their slower hybrid-fibre G.fast service. The other local rival, albeit with limited coverage, is Hyperoptic in the city centre (mostly MDU focused).