CityFibre has today committed £32m to support the rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across both the North Yorkshire (England) seaside town of Redcar and the large port town of Hartlepool in County Durham. The move should complement their existing Tees Valley build in Middlesbrough.
Construction work on the new network is due to begin in “early 2022” across both locations, beginning with Hartlepool (we believe this will also include Seaton Carew, Hart Station, High Throston, Rift House). Sadly, there is currently no detail on which civil engineering firm has been selected to conduct the build.
The rollout forms part of CityFibre’s wider £4bn investment, which has already covered 1 million UK premises with FTTP 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.
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Steph Carter-Smith, CityFibre City Manager for Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and Redcar, said:
“This is an exciting time for the region as our teams get set to begin work on our transformative Full Fibre network – and we think people will be blown away by the difference it will make, both now and for generations to come. We cannot wait for residents and businesses to see what is possible with digital connectivity that propels you forward, rather than holding you back.”
As usual CityFibre won’t be the only gigabit-capable broadband network to play in these waters. For example, Virgin Media’s network is already widely available across both locations and Openreach also have a growing amount of FTTP infrastructure. In addition, both OFNL and Hyperoptic have a tiny amount of full fibre in Hartlepool at some specific sites.
On top of that, Grain also announced this month that they too would be building across Hartlepool (here). Suffice to say, both towns look set to have a lot of competitive broadband infrastructure.
No news of London
Nor will there be. CityFibre build out from existing networks and don’t have one in London.
Obviously not, cityfibre don’t have a network in London, and focus on locations other than London. Smh, did this just become news to you today?
Where do Openreach have FTTP near Hartlepool?
Their FTTP build map is empty around Teesside except for a small rural area South of Darlington.