Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

VIDEO – Virtual Walk-Through of CityFibre’s UK Full Fibre Network

Monday, Jun 28th, 2021 (9:20 am) - Score 2,760
CityFibre ODF in Fibre Exchange

CityFibre has published a new video online that acts as a moderately basic, but still interesting, “virtual walk-through” of their new full fibre (FTTP) gigabit broadband ISP network, which at a cost of some £4bn (details) is currently being deployed to cover 8 million UK premises by around the end of 2025.

Unlike recent videos from Virgin Media (here) and Openreach (here), which were refreshingly detailed and came directly from an engineer’s perspective (although VM has now removed theirs), CityFibre’s video falls more into the simplified and somewhat promotional category. Nevertheless, they’ve added just enough detail to make it worth a watch (credits to Aman for spotting this).

Share with Twitter
Share with Linkedin
Share with Facebook
Share with Reddit
Share with Pinterest
Tags: ,
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
15 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Hugh says:

    My street recently went live with Cityfibre FTTP and I can place an order with TalkTalk or Brawband in Inverness. However there’s no toby box outside/near my home or anywhere else on my street for that matter. Which would normally mean Cityfibre will be using existing Openreach ducts to connect my home to their nearest FTTP cabinet (no overhead poles in my area). But Brawband have informed that Cityfibre do NOT have permission/agreement to use OR ducts in the Inverness area so it will be new ducts. So how will my home be connected without any toby box? Btw CF have not dug up my street, they’ve only dug up the main road on which their green FTTP cabinet is located.

    1. Avatar photo Meadmodj says:

      Each location is likely to be on what is most cost effective short term and long term.

      They can and do use OR duct (or others) if they need to. I have only observed Crawley and there they are running their own duct to OR Poles and installing aerial splitters or where service is underground installing toby boxes at each premise and micro ducting back to a suitable distribution cabinet.

    2. Avatar photo Geroi says:

      Hi,

      Just follow the path of the fibre from ONT in your home, though external wall, then outside and see where it takes you. Maybe you are so close to the street node that you have direct fibre to there ?

    3. Avatar photo NE555 says:

      Sounds to me like Brawband are misinformed.

      If the property is showing as “available to order” via Talktalk or others, this means the infrastructure is already in place: they don’t dig on demand for home FTTP services. Therefore, if there’s no Toby box and no pole, then they’ll be using existing Openreach ducts.

      The other possibility is that there’s a database error, and your street *isn’t* yet ready to order service. In that case, your order will fail. But that’s quite unlikely.

  2. Avatar photo Random Precision says:

    Virgin Media have ducts outside my home, CityFibre are due to commence their build in the next few months, will they be allowed to use the Virgin ducts?

    1. Avatar photo Jon says:

      No – Virgin do not currently share their ducts or infrastructure.

  3. Avatar photo Meadmodj says:

    In the strap lines in the Video they say “We aim to build once and build right” and “We build for the whole city, street by street” which is different from their previous statements of around 85% coverage and personal observation that there appears to be particular roads and isolated premises being missed in their build of Langley Green and Gossops Green in Crawley.

    So is there a change in their policy or are some of their processes failing?

    What I did find interesting was their use of rings for increase resilience and how this is being technically achieved using GPON.

    1. Avatar photo CarlT says:

      I’ve no doubt the metro network is rings. To do this with GPON, however, means 2 OLTs, one active and one standby.

  4. Avatar photo Essa says:

    I have to say this again, the way the Government have approached this is very poor. As mentioned, each individual FTTP vendor across country is digging up roads etc and putting in their own cables etc. It would be by far more efficient that a something like Openreach would be creating the infrastructure like the ducting etc, and any other vendor could use this for a fee or a yearly subscription.

    For example Citryfiber can’t use Virgin ducting or Openreach, this adds cost but also increase the deployment time and not least cause more interruption in the the local community.

    It would be far more efficient, that one company dig and put “Pipe” and any FTTP or ISP can use this hard infrastructure to put through their fiber through.

    1. Avatar photo Matt says:

      What does this have to do with government?

      The reason you have this approach is because it’s whatever is commercially viable. The only way UK Gov could do what you’re saying, is to basically buy out and nationalise Openreach. (£££)

      That brings it’s own set of challenges and problems – it also removes competition so once that level of service is in – there will be no reason to invest further, then it comes a race to the bottom to provide the cheapest service over the same infrastructure (see outsourcing support and other corner cutting measures)

    2. Avatar photo Roger_Gooner says:

      The fibre is only part of the infrastructure. For example, Virgin Media uses RFoG between the virtual hub and customer premises, and the virtual hub is on a VLAN connection with the hub site. Other operators have a different system.

    3. Avatar photo Adam says:

      Perhaps Ofcom could use regulation to make Openreach provide access? And perhaps they could call the product, Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA)?

      https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/passive-products/physical-infrastructure-access(PIA)

      Openreach are required to supply access to ducts and poles, and people like CityFibre do make use of it, a lot of the overhead access is provided via Openreach poles. The problem is PIA is difficult to use in a lot of cases and there are a lot of issues with blocked, full, non-existent or incorrectly recorded ducts, or Openreach’s cables are direct buried.

      Often it is easier and more cost effective for the Altnet to put their own infrastructure in from scratch.

    4. Avatar photo CarlT says:

      I have to say this again: it’s a really good idea to read the story and indeed follow the links for the source content before commenting.

  5. Avatar photo Optical says:

    Just wish Cityfibre would get Sky onboard.

    1. Avatar photo Badem says:

      Given the amount of ISPs signing wholesale terms with CF I can only imagine SKY is not far away from joining a growing list of ISPs using FTTP from CF.

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5473)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2525)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1780)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)

Helpful ISP Guides and Tips

Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon