ISP Zen Internet Extend UK CityFibre FTTP Availability Nationwide

Last year we reported that UK ISP Zen Internet was preparing to make their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband packages on CityFibre’s new network available nationwide (here). A new deal has now been signed that sees Zen making an exclusive long-term volume commitment across CF’s entire network plan.

CityFibre’s £4bn investment programme has so far enabled their “full fibre” network to cover 1.5 million UK premises (here), and they currently aim to have 8 million premises “substantially completed” – across around 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). Once complete, this should also cover 800,000 businesses, 400,000 public sector sites and 250,000 5G access points.

Until now, only CF’s oldest consumer ISP partner, Vodafone, had officially committed to achieving nationwide availability across their new network (here) – this is due to be achieved by the end of next month – and, outside that, the level of ISP support between different build locations has tended to vary.

However, Vodafone has now been joined by Zen Internet after the ISP agreed a major expansion to their strategic partnership with the operator. Initially, Zen’s service was only available to consumers on CityFibre’s networks in Newcastle, Leicester, Ipswich and Worthing. But that has since increased and their broadband packages can now be found in 31 locations on CF’s ever-expanding network.

The new deal means that Zen will continue to launch in new cities over the coming weeks, and it is expected that its services will be available to all homes across the entire CityFibre footprint by “late 2022” (last year we were given the more specific date of September 2022).

Paul Stobart, CEO of Zen, said:

“We’re delighted to be working with CityFibre on delivering full fibre broadband to even more UK homes up and down the country. We’re seeing great consumer demand and interest in our early cities and are excited to ensure more homes can access an award-winning full fibre service at what is a pivotal time for connectivity in the home. By 2030 everyone will have made the switch and we are excited about the role Zen plays as an ultrafast pioneer to be a key enabler of early adoption.

Our industry is rapidly changing as is today’s consumer who rightfully demands a reliable and speedy service. The rates in volume of data and information being shared has increased beyond all recognition and people are fundamentally reliant on good connectivity. The CityFibre rollout provides a level of healthy competition and providers like us here at Zen have a critical role to play in delivering reliable connections whilst looking after our customers really well.”

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“We are delighted to have had the opportunity to demonstrate the technical and commercial superiority of our Full Fibre networks to Zen and we are thrilled they have selected CityFibre as a network of choice across our nationwide rollout. Zen has proven to be an outstanding partner, and we look forward to accelerating the availability of their market-leading services to millions of homes across the UK.

We are determined to build the UK’s finest Full Fibre network, a rock-solid platform for our customers, with better products at the right economics. In doing so, we’re playing our part in helping to provide the UK with the critical digital infrastructure and competitive dynamic needed to drive improved services and prices for consumers across the country.”

We should point out that Zen and Vodafone won’t be the only ISPs to achieve nationwide availability on CityFibre’s new full fibre network. We fully expect TalkTalk to follow in the not-too-distant future and others, such as Giganet, seem to be steadily moving in a broadly similar direction.

Customers on Zen Internet typically pay from £29.99 per month for a 100Mbps package on an 18-month term with free setup, which rises to just £47.99 for their top 900Mbps package on a 24-month term. We should point out that a quirk of Ofcom’s speed code means that Zen still presents these packages with asymmetric upload speeds (rather than symmetric), but under the hood they’re still uncapped and symmetric like other CF ISPs.

The advertised upload speeds should change once Zen has enough data on real-world speeds to set the figures correctly, but for now they’re a soft-mirror for the Openreach based tiers.