Svella Connect Takes Over CityFibre’s FTTP Rollout in Barnsley

CityFibre UK has today confirmed that their £32m rollout of a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network in the South Yorkshire town of Barnsley, which was disrupted after the collapse of their previous contractor NMCN (here), will now be conducted by Svella Connect.

We previously speculated that this might be the outcome after the administration process for NMCN ended up selling the company’s telecommunications, plant and equipment business to Svella, which already appeared to have been continuing with some of the old contractor’s work in the local area.

According to today’s announcement, “mobilisation is now underway with Svella Connect to replace the previous build partner” and construction is due to begin again in “early 2022.”

Natalie Ward, CityFibre’s City Manager for Barnsley, said:

“We are delighted to have appointed a new build partner so quickly who we know will really help ramp up our operation in the town. Already this year we have made significant progress and we aim to accelerate even faster throughout 2022.

CityFibre is leading the charge in South Yorkshire to make Full Fibre available to the people and businesses of Barnsley and we look forward to this transformative technology being available in even more homes very soon.”

We should point out that the failure of NMCN was largely due to historic problems, which we’ve already covered in our prior article, and is not related to CityFibre’s own contract. NMCN was also CityFibre’s contractor for Halifax, although that build wasn’t due to start until next month and thus the impact should be much more manageable (it’s currently unclear whether Svella will also take on the job in Halifax).