CityFibre Hits Target of 1 Million UK FTTP Broadband Premises

CityFibre, which is investing £4bn to cover 8 million UK premises with their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network by around the end of 2025, has today announced the successful completion of their first target by extending the network to cover 1 million homes and businesses before the end of 2021.

The operator – supported by investment from the West Street Infrastructure Fund (Goldman Sachs), Antin Infrastructure Fund, Interogo Holdings and Mubadala – has been building Dark Fibre style networks to serve businesses and the public sector for many years. But all of that started to change in 2018 when they decided to embark on a major network expansion that would reach millions of homes.

As part of that, CityFibre are investing £4bn to cover 1 million UK premises with their full fibre network by the end of 2021 and then 8 million are expected to be “substantially completed” across 285 cities, towns and villages – c.30% of the UK – by the end of 2025 (here). This will potentially also cover 800,000 businesses, 400,000 public sector sites and 250,000 5G access points.

Today’s news means that their first target has been achieved, and CityFibre is thus well on its way to establishing itself as the UK’s third-largest FTTP broadband operator after Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media (VMO2). As of today, they have 26 construction companies mobilised and in-build across over 60 UK towns and cities. Indeed, they’re currently the largest provider of Full Fibre lines in more than 25 of those locations.

By the end of 2022, it plans to have builds underway across more than 150 cities, towns and villages, before expanding to 285 by 2025. Homes served by this network can now place an order with one of 30 of its consumer ISP partners and receive Gigabit-capable, symmetrical services in as little as 5 working days. It has also secured long-term commitments from larger ISP partners Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen Internet.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“This is a significant milestone on our path to reaching 8 million premises and we are already the largest provider of Full Fibre lines in more than 25 towns and cities. The quality of the network we are building has already attracted some of the country’s biggest ISPs while we are also seeing the emergence of new and exciting brands offering even more options for consumers.

With a million homes now able to access our Full Fibre connectivity and more added every day, we are focused on supporting our consumer ISP partners to drive service take-up. We look forward to collaborating with our partners in the coming months to design compelling new packages and initiatives, and to continue raising awareness of the benefits of Full Fibre.”

Julia Lopez, Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure, saying:

“A huge congratulations to everyone at CityFibre for their efforts to reach this impressive milestone in our national mission to level up the UK with much faster broadband.

In government we are driving competition and speeding up rollout. Our £5 billion Project Gigabit will help providers like CityFibre bring the incredible benefits of next-generation connectivity to people in hard-to-reach areas.”

Admittedly CityFibre’s gigabit rollout plan is still significantly smaller than that of Openreach’s (25 million FTTP premises by Dec 2026) and Virgin Media (potentially matching OR by 2028), but equally the extra competition that they’ve helped to bring into the UK market is one part of the reason why both Openreach and VMO2 have felt it necessary to respond with bigger builds of their own.

On top of that the operator has also expressed a desire to compete for rural deployment contracts under the UK Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which is an area that they’ve already trialled (here). In theory, successful contract wins under Project Gigabit could see their future network coverage expand beyond the current target, and possibly reaching up to 9+ million premises. But only time will tell.

We also have to credit CityFibre for highlighting that the 1 million premises announced today are all reflective of properties in a Ready For Service (RFS) state, which means that customers should be able to place an order for a live service. By comparison, some providers still cheekily prefer to include passed, but not yet live, premises in their publicly stated coverage figures.

Finally, we note that the operator’s coverage had previously reached 500,000 premises at the start of this year, which suggests that their pace of build has ramped-up sharply from a monthly rate of 24,000 premises passed to around 42,000 premises passed. CityFibre has said that they expect to continue ramping-up in order to meet their next target.