CityFibre May Extend Stirling’s 1Gbps Broadband to Nearby Villages UPDATE

The MP for the small city of Stirling in Scotland, Alyn Smith (SNP), has revealed that CityFibre, which recently completed the rollout of a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network for over 20,000 premises in the city, may soon extend this network to reach thousands of premises in nearby villages.

Stirling officially became CityFibre’s first completed “Gigabit City” project in August 2020 (here) and they promptly invested in a small expansion. But local MP Alyn Smith has also been actively campaigning for the operator to extend further, ideally covering local homes around the Bannockburn and Eastern Villages area of the Stirling constituency.

The good news, as spotted by one of our readers (credits Arran), is that Alyn may have been successful. According to the public letter, CityFibre has agreed to extend their network to a further 8,000 – 9,000 premises, including villages such as Dunblane, Cowie, Plean, Fallin and Throsk, and possibly more.

All of this should aid CityFibre’s wider £4bn investment programme, which has already covered 1 million UK premises with gigabit-capable 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 a total of around 800,000 businesses, 400,000 public sector sites and 250,000 5G access points.

Alyn Smith MP said:

“Having discussed this matter directly with CityFibre, I am pleased to confirm that, working in partnership with Stirling Council, they now intend to connect a further 8,000-9,000 additional homes in Dunblane, Cowie, Plean, Fallin and Throsk, as well as expanding the fringes of Stirling’s existing network area.

It is my view that such infrastructure will bring a better quality of life to local residents in Bannockburn and the Eastern Villages, ensuring seamless access to online services and shopping, work responsibilities, streaming and gaming, as well as video calling family, friends, and colleagues.”

Stirling is unique in that it remains one of the precious few cities where CityFibre has virtually no gigabit-capable broadband rivals to worry about, with Virgin Media having long shunned the area and Openreach only having a few tiny patches of full fibre coverage. Suffice to say, the planned expansion looks like a fairly good move as the new areas are in a similar position to the city itself. We have asked CityFibre to comment and will report back.

UPDATE 11:10am

Alyn’s attempt to publicly “confirm” the extension plan for CityFibre’s network may have been premature. A spokesperson for the MP informs us that “talks are still at the very early stages and funding discussions remain ongoing,” although the MP’s “preliminary” discussions are said to have been “extremely positive” and he has “committed to help key stakeholders gauge public support behind such proposals ahead of any expansion.”

A spokesperson for CityFibre similarly confirmed that they were still “evaluating” the rollout for this area and that “no decisions have been made yet.”