CityFibre Begin GBP12m FTTP Broadband Rollout for Horsham
CityFibre has today announced that they’ve begun to rollout their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network for local homes in the West Sussex market town of Horsham, which is home to a population of around 51,000 and is expected to cost the operator £12 million to complete.
The deployment forms part of CityFibre’s wider £4bn deployment programme, which has already covered 1 million UK premises and aims to have 8 million “substantially completed” – across 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). This will also cover around 800,000 businesses, 400,000 public sector sites and 250,000 5G access points.
The first area in Horsham to benefit will be Hammerpond Road in the east of the town. CityFibre has contracted civil engineering firm Lanes-i to conduct the work. Each area will usually take a few weeks to complete, however, construction teams will typically only be outside each home for 2-3 days. CityFibre will usually inform residents by post ahead of any work starting.
The overall project is then expected to reach completion by 2023/4, although the first services will go live for people to take advantage of sometime next year.
Anne Krausse, CityFibre’s City Manager for Horsham, said:
“I’m immensely excited and proud to see work getting underway in Horsham as the town gets ready to thrive in the digital age. It’s important to remember that any short-term disruption will pay off in the long-term; once the network’s built, it will serve the community’s connectivity needs for decades to come and plays a crucial role in growing and protecting local economies.”
As usual there is a catch here because a number of other gigabit-capable broadband networks are also targetting Horsham. For example, Hey! Broadband (F&W Networks) has covered most of the town with their rollout and Openreach have deployed some FTTP too, as have Box Broadband (CommunityFibre), Hyperoptic and OFNL.
Otherwise, in terms of CityFibre based ISP support, we note that both Giganet and No One (Trunk Networks) intend to serve Horsham.
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 Linkedin.
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Overbuild in full progress.
Yup where as where I am there’s only FTTC :/
Their money, their decision.
Be nice if one of those companies building here had included our road!
Hammerpond Road seems to be a strange choice to start CityFibres build, but they have to start somewhere.
If it helps you can view some of the forthcoming build on the one.network site:
https://one.network/custom/westsussex
You will need to create a free account to view the three months ahead option, which shows Cityfibre moving west from the Hammerpond area up to around Millais.
a race to the bottom for the alt nets……..well done CF for its strategic thinking here….. 🙂
The 4th full fibre builder in Horsham after F&W, Box and Openreach. Honestly I think the people of Horsham are already in the digital age!
I live in a small stretch in the road where Hey!Broadband and perhaps all companies that use the ageing BT Openreach infrastructure, will not or can not install. Even though they have fed the cable outside my house, they have not attached to the pole. Cityfibre is now thankfully digging just that stretch and putting their own infrastructure in.
Yup same. This is my concern too, that all the operators so far are missing out the areas where building is just a little bit more tricky (e.g. no poles, older OR ducts). Just got my fingers crossed that CityFibre will include us and not bypass us like FW and OR have.
To be fair the full OR FTTP rollout does not start officially until April.
Altnets have been installing their Aerial splitters across Horsham so OR have in places expedited their brackets and CBTs on pole areas to reserve their space.
The old saying two’s company three is a crowd comes to mind. With the old copper BT (sometimes more than one), a OR CBT and an Altnet aerial splitter it can be a little crowded and dangerous. Cityfibre may add to this.
So you are likely to see more OR activity now and their coverage plan April 21 to 25 appears comprehensive. Unlike Crawley there is no VM. https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/where-when-building-ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband RH12 1RG
The Altnets are more likely to place an area, road or particular premise into the too hard box than OR who must replace all their copper to meet BT obligations and get their savings.
That is not to say come 2025 OR may decide to exclude certain areas or provide a revised network design (higher GPON ratios for residential and a XGS-PON overlay for business) if two or more Altnets become dominant e.g Crawley. Especially if certain ISPs have migrated to those particular Altnets.
It doesn’t make why CityFibre are now spending money on Horsham when it has already mostly been covered by FW Networks. Lots of wasted capex here and potentially very risky for CityFibre.
CW are also working now working in Forestfield (in the Smithbarn/Millais/Comptons Lane area)
Would of been nice if CityFibre were making it all Proper 21st Century stuff. Instead we have just had a New Wooden Telegraph pole put slap bang on the corner of Devonshire/Clarence road. Never been a need for one there before. those poles are an eyesore at best and suddenly we have more of them going in. They said they will notify residents before any work was started, yet Pole went in and no notice before hand they were going to do it. there is a notice about if you wish to complain, but its stuck 8foot up the pole. Im all for Fibre to the house. Just get rid of these Overhead Cables..