CityFibre Full Fibre Build Makes Progress in Poole and Christchurch
CityFibre has today issued a progress update on their £65 million investment to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network for homes and businesses in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch (Dorset), which has just gone live in a number of new areas, or so they say.
The work to upgrade and extend their legacy FTTH network in the south coast city of Bournemouth began all the way back in 2019, while the £30m build across the two neighbouring towns of Poole and Christchurch – supported by civil engineering firm CCN Communications – officially began last March (here).
The latest neighbourhoods to go “live” in Bournemouth include Pokesdown and parts of Boscombe, while Canford Heath in Poole is also said to have joined this club. CityFibre added that they will soon start building in Westbourne (Bournemouth), Canford Cliffs (Poole) and Highcliffe (Christchurch). However, we ran a few Canford Heath postcodes through Vodafone, DH and JB’s fibre checkers, but none were orderable.
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Sadly, CityFibre has not said how many premises they intend to cover in the BCP area or how many have already been reached, and it remains unclear when the rollout in each town will complete.
Kathryn Askew Smith, CityFibre’s BCP City Manager, said:
“BCP is a key element of our plan for connecting the UK to our next generation full fibre network. I’m looking forward to taking the project forward at this important stage, as we expand our builds in Poole and Christchurch, as well as Bournemouth. Many neighbourhoods are already able to choose services over CityFibre’s network that suit their budget and needs, with more being connected each month.”
The press release claims that the operator will “light up the network” as “work is completed in each neighbourhood,” but experiences do seem to vary, and some readers find that it can often take a fair bit of time before consumers are able to order the service from a supporting ISP. Press releases that claim “live” availability in specific areas, which do not then all convert into reality, certainly don’t help.
CityFibre’s main gigabit-capable competition in the BCP area is Virgin Media, while Openreach has deployed surprisingly little FTTP across the three locations. In other words, there’s plenty of opportunity for CityFibre’s retail ISP partners to steal customers away from a more establish rival.
The above rollout forms part of CityFibre’s wider £4bn investment programme, 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).
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UPDATE 3:11pm
According to an update from CF’s media team, and somewhat contrary to the statement in their press release, the service is not yet “live” in Poole for customers. We note that CityFibre’s own checker does state that many premises in Canford Heath are live, but their supporting ISPs in the area continue to say the opposite.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’m in Canford Heath and CF website advises it is is live outside my home however need to register until one of their broadband partners becomes available. Frustrating to say the least!
Yep, hopefully they can solve this issue in the next few days or weeks, rather than months, as it keeps cropping up.
Would be interested to see any updates to the Phase 2 locations that was anncounced last March (2021).
Hi Mark
Your website is the only source of reliable information about fibre broadband provision. Keep up the good work!
I live in Compton Avenue, Poole. Virgin cable stops three doors up and with FTTC, the fastest I can get is 30mbs with copper on a telegraph pole. As I am a radiologist, I need to look at very high definition scans with thousands of images, often in an emergency on call from home and the speed of my connection limits my ability to do this quickly enough. BT tells me that Openreach has no plans to upgrade our area, Cityfibre has no clear plans and Virgin won’t extend their network. Our government goes on about “levelling up” yet we have normal urban residential streets that through a random postcode lottery end up on obsolete copper cable potentially forever. I’m told that if I get my neighbours together, we could persuade a company to include us in their plans but I find that many of them are unaware of the issue, even the younger ones. But really, how can it be fair that much of the country gets FTTP without even asking and we’re only going to get it after a campaign?
Is there anything I can do?
George
Perhaps get a leased line, or a FTTPoD, and treat it as part of your business expenses, to reduce your business tax? Thus let the HMRC pay for it 🙂
I had a similar problem for my mum and my step dad, I contacted virgin and through contacting them and my local MP and councillors managed to get it put the further 4 doors down as long as my neighbours signed up too.
CF when I asked doesn’t have a fair amount of Parkstone on their current roll out either. Seems like their ‘pool’ rollout is a half arsed affair….
I saw a couple of people in Hi-Vis walking around Canford Heath area today, one CityFibre and the other from another company but seen them around do the installing/checking of the infrastructure before. They’ve had my postcode marked as “live” on CityFibre since December, not sure why if they aren’t actually ready, can’t they hurry up and take my money already?!
I live on canford heath with a virgin contract finishing in April. Was hoping I could compare city fibre with virgin but getting less likely as days go on. Never been able to make any contact with City Fibre.
Quenten Walker
Scarf Road
when is fttp coming to bh15 area
CF are outside my house now digging up the road. I got rid of Virgin last year after 25 years and have no intention of having my garden dug up for more cable to be ran. BT Fibre gets me 60Mbps and lets face it, what service is going to stream anywhere near that.
Hi I live in Highcliffe & watched with joy as the installation began only to be amazed that our estate was completely ignored. Every single road surrounding us was cabled & they even began our road only to pack up & leave without continuing. Is there anywhere to get details of if & when they plan to return