CityFibre Start Fibre Build in Chichester as Vfast Join in Medway

CityFibre UK has today started the rollout of their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network in the South East England based cathedral city of Chichester. At the same time, Kent-based ISP Vfast (Orbital Net) has announced that they will also be providing services via CF’s network in Medway.

First up, the rollout in Chichester is being supported by civil engineering firm CCN Communications Limited, which has already begun to build the new network in the Fishbourne and Stockbridge areas, meaning people in these areas will be the first to enjoy the benefits of full fibre once the network is live.

Each area will usually take a few weeks to complete, however, construction teams will typically only be outside each home for two to three days and CityFibre will be in touch by post ahead of any work starting. The overall project in the city is currently “expected to reach completion by late 2023,” but services will go live incrementally much sooner.

All of this forms part of Cityfibre’s £4bn commitment, which aims to cover 1 million UK premises with their FTTP network by the end of 2021 and then 8 million premises are expected to be “substantially completed” across 285 cities, towns and villages – c.30% of the UK – by the end of 2025 (here); CityFibre may also be about to extend this target up to as much as 9-10 million premises (here).

We should point out that CF’s new network will face some competition from gigabit-capable rivals in the city. For example, Virgin Media’s network is already present across much of the city, while Openreach have a growing FTTP deployment and Hyperoptic exist in some local MDUs (large residential apartment buildings). OFNL also has a tiny presence on one new build site.

Adrian Smith, CityFibre’s City Manager, said:

“The next chapter in the digital future of Chichester begins today and I’m immensely proud to see work now underway. It’s important to remember that any short-term disruption will pay off tremendously in the long-term. We cannot wait for residents and businesses to see what is possible with digital connectivity that propels you forward rather than holds you back. And once the network’s built, it will serve the community’s connectivity needs for decades to come.”

In a separate development, Vfast, which operates its own Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) network in various parts of England and is also building its own FTTP network (via parent Orbital Net) in rural parts of Kent and Sussex (here), has just joined CityFibre’s growing £40m FTTP network rollout in parts of Medway (i.e. Chatham and Gillingham) as an ISP.

Benjamin Doherty, Chief Technical Officer of Vfast, said:

“We’re thrilled to be working with CityFibre on its Kent expansion project. We will be offering pure fibre to the residents of Chatham and Gillingham, backed by Vfast’s first class support from our Kent based call centre.

The appetite for consumer bandwidth is only growing and we are proud to be one of the ISPs at the fore front of this revolution.

Our local network and local approach will provide customers with gigabit services, whilst allowing us to bring our services to a whole new audience.”

CityFibre’s build in Medway is steadily gathering pace and services are expected to go live with Kent based ISP Vfast from January 2022.