CityFibre has today committed an additional £12.5 million to help boost their ongoing deployment of a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in the West Midlands city of Coventry, which will see them reach “tens of thousands more homes and businesses” across the location.
The Coventry project, supported by launch partner Vodafone (Gigafast Broadband), was one of the very first cities to be targetted by the operator’s FTTP deployment in 2018 (here and here), which saw them invest £60m. Since then, tens of thousands of premises across the city have already gained access to the service, which last month “passed the halfway mark” on their original build plan.
Homes in Ash Green, Holbrooks, Keresley End and Radford as well as Longford, Stoke and Wyken are now ready for service. Meanwhile, work is currently active in the Tile Hill, Allesley Village, Binley and Walsgrave areas, which is being delivered by contractor Callan Connect.
The boost of £12.5m is thus expected to help CityFibre reach “tens of thousands more homes and businesses” across the city, although it’s always a little difficult to judge the reality of this because the operator has never given a solid premises passed target. However, we do recall that the original target was to cover “almost every home” in the city by the end of 2021, and they typically aim for around 85% coverage.
Leigh Hunt, CityFibre’s City Manager for Coventry, said:
“We’re making huge strides in delivering full fibre to homes and businesses across Coventry, and we’re thrilled to now be bringing our best-in-class network to communities in the west of the city. The rolling out of full fibre infrastructure forms part of Coventry City Council’s COVID-19 recovery plan and will provide communities with the digital foundation they need to thrive today, tomorrow and in the decades to come.
At CityFibre, we pride ourselves on being agile and flexible. There is clear demand for full fibre and we’re now working quickly to ensure premises in Westwood, Tile Hill and Allesley can access our network later this year.”
As usual this forms part of the operator’s wider £4bn investment programme, which ultimately aims to cover 1 million UK premises with their alternative FTTP network by the end of 2021 (almost 650,000 have already been reached) and then 8 million premises across 285 cities, towns and villages – c.30% of the UK (here). The latter target is expected to be “substantially completed” by the end of 2025.
CityFibre also continues to face plenty of gigabit-capable competition in the city from Virgin Media (HFC / FTTP) and Openreach (FTTP).
Respect to cityfibre atleast they know something about broadband in this rotten country.
Pls roll into Greater London
my virgin media upload speed sucks