Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

CityFibre Complete Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Milton Keynes

Tuesday, Apr 5th, 2022 (10:33 am) - Score 2,256
vodafone cityfibre ftth build

CityFibre has today completed their £43m rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network in the Buckinghamshire (England) town of Milton Keynes, which has reached 90,000 homes (c.90% of the addressable residential properties, as well as most businesses and key public sector sites).

The build forms part of the operator’s £4bn investment programme, which has so far enabled their full fibre network to cover 1.5 million UK premises with 1.3m ‘Ready for Service’ (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).

NOTE: Cityfibre is being supported by various ISPs in the town, such as Vodafone (Gigafast Broadband), TalkTalk, Zen Internet, iDNET and Fibrehop.

The town of Milton Keynes was one of the very first to benefit from the start of CityFibre’s rollout in March 2018, which was also supported by their civil engineering contractor – Granemore Group. Since then, the operator has laid almost 1,000km of Full Fibre infrastructure across nearly every street in the town.

The new fibre network also underpins the MK:5G project, led by Milton Keynes Council (MKC), which trials and seeks to illustrate the near-term technological benefits of 5G mobile (mobile broadband) including autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots etc.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“As we complete our rollout in Milton Keynes, we leave behind a city fully equipped for the data age. With the UK’s finest digital infrastructure under its streets, its citizens, businesses, and public institutions are only just beginning to tap into the huge benefits that are to come.

Completed city-wide networks are now rolling off our production line, proof of the impact of digital infrastructure competition in the UK. Each new network is delivering faster speeds, more reliable services and better value to our partners and to consumers.”

Ben Everitt, MP for Milton Keynes North, said:

“Milton Keynes finishing its journey to become a Gigabit City is a huge moment and a fantastic achievement for all involved. With CityFibre’s project now complete, households, businesses and public sector sites across MK will be able to benefit from the best possible internet connections.

The legacy left by this project is just beginning. The world class digital infrastructure now in place will keep Milton Keynes at the cutting edge of technological change and underpin our growth and success for generations to come.”

The announcement notes that a forthcoming CityFibre commissioned report by the consultancy, Hatch, will show that MK stands to experience “significant economic, social and environmental benefits from its new digital infrastructure platform including over £560m in productivity gains and £123m from a widened workforce over a 15-year period“. Enabling 5G rollout alone could drive up to £1bn in positive economic impact, it claims.

However, trying to accurately gauge the economic impact of deploying faster broadband is always notoriously difficult, not least since most businesses and homes won’t be starting from a point of zero connectivity (“superfast broadband” at 30Mbps+ is now common). Likewise, we’re all very different in our requirements, and not all businesses benefit from having access to significantly faster broadband speeds than are currently available.

In short, any study that claims to show a huge economic boost should be taken with a pinch of salt, as they’re often overly optimistic. Nevertheless, few could disagree that there does tend to be a strong positive relationship between broadband investment and growth, even if there is an issue of diminishing returns. What CityFibre has achieved in MK by building out a total new network is impressive and should not be understated.

In terms of local gigabit-capable rivals, CityFibre’s main opponent in the town is Openreach, although Hyperoptic and OFNL do have the odd small deployment too.

Share with Twitter
Share with Linkedin
Share with Facebook
Share with Reddit
Share with Pinterest
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
19 Responses
  1. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

    As Milton Keynes has over 160 thousand homes and they have only done 90 thousand homes, I don’t think that can be 90% coverage.

    As I’ve lived in Milton Keynes since 1986 I’ve seen for myself how it’s grown.

    1. Avatar photo Andrew Ferguson says:

      Since when did Milton Keynes have over 160,000 homes?

      124,000 premises (residential + business) up from 122,000 two years ago.

      https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E06000042

      74.4% has an alt-net FTTP coverage, which is 92,256 so numbers from CityFibre look reasonable and that is before I’ve done the sweep across Milton Keynes for stuff built in the last few weeks. There are some other alt nets present such as Hyperoptic, OFNL

    2. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

      @Andrew It would be interesting to know where you get your data from as MK has nearly doubled in size in the last decade alone.

    3. Avatar photo Andrew Ferguson says:

      Well a decade ago it was down at 100,000 so it has been growing, and would expect me to be notice a gap of 40,000 premises

      https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#12/51.9988/-0.7057/allfttp/openreach/adsl/ all the postcodes, so care to highlight the missing areas?

      My figures are in line with other sources such as the council Housing stock in the borough = 118,653 (https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/your-council-and-elections/statistics/housing-statistics)

      Some sources though refer to MK postcode area which is a LOT more than Milton Keynes

    4. Avatar photo occasionally factual says:

      So CityFibre “complete Council Area” rollout is 90k from a total housing stock of 118k meaning it covers roughly 76% of the borough.

      People need to bear that in mind when they see the words “complete town” as 3 quarters isn’t complete.

    5. Avatar photo Alex says:

      Mark what evidence do City Fibre give for 90%? Based on the numbers above from Andrew and co, you’re repeating a lie?

    6. Avatar photo JmJohnson says:

      I’m lost… where did they say the borough or council area ? They said town.

      A quick check of addresses could and can be misleading.
      Much like how I live in a village outside the town of Ipswich yet my address, the OR database, voting etc would indicate that I live in north Ipswich.

      New builds generally happen on the outskirts of towns/cities, usually within a bordering village. Sometimes so close you’d think they are part of the town.
      This is why I fully believe the claim of 90%.

    7. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

      @Andrew according to the 2011 census there was over 108 thousand homes in Milton Keynes at the time of the census. Just by adding the Whitehouse development alone would push that to over 112 thousand, therefore your figures are way out.

    8. Avatar photo Andrew Ferguson says:

      It is called a carefully worded press release…

      Urban Milton Keynes Unitary Authority is around 102,000 premises
      Rural Milton Keynes is around 22,000 premises

      So if CityFibre is looking at just the urban parts, then it is a different percentage, given their footprint is almost all in the urban part. So the 90% is nothing I’d dispute.

    9. Avatar photo Andrew Ferguson says:

      NOTE: I have never said the figures are absolutely correct, house building is a constant thing and there is a tendency to always be a couple of thousand behind, but given posters original position was that Milton Keynes has 160,000 homes I think I am considerably closer to reality than they are.

    10. Avatar photo Alex says:

      Carefully worded press release, lol. You mean spin!

    11. Mark-Jackson Mark Jackson says:

      I think Andrew has already answered this. CityFibre are only focused on the urban part of MK the town, not the wider area.. yet. I’d tend to trust TBB’s data as a very good indication. But do remember that TBB’s data isn’t real-time, so there’s a lot of work involved in finding new premises when they go live and that takes time to complete. A quick look at the history of build in MK does also seem to support CF’s coverage of the main town. All of this is good news.

    12. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

      @Mark and @Andrew Please take this from someone who has lived in MK for many years, the urban part of MK does cover a very wide area.

      My family laughed so much at the suggestion that there was a rural part of Milton Keynes, their comments were it’s obvious that they have never visited Milk and Beans lol.

    13. Avatar photo RR says:

      And if its anything like here in Northampton, Cityfibre don’t appear to touch a new estate if its still being built on which could leave hundreds of houses off the list.

    14. Avatar photo M says:

      Here’s the data I have collected this is accurate as of this morning (MK1 to MK15):

      https://i.imgur.com/QKS17PD.png

      Each dot represents a single premise/UPRN.

      Green = Serviceable
      Orange = Planned
      Dark Red = Problems, but planned

    15. Avatar photo WibbledOff says:

      @M That makes it interesting if that’s accurate as that means there is only about 60% coverage, far lower than the 90% that the PR spin machine is claiming.

  2. Avatar photo SO_HAPPY says:

    Great. That’s great. Good for them. Uh huh, uh huh. Yep.

    I love reading this whilst CityFibre are cabling the street next to mine but have NO firm plans to get to me. I loved being told they’d be here by December.

    I’m SO HAPPY for Milton Keynes.

    1. Avatar photo TBC says:

      It sounds like your street is in a different cabinet area. Unfortunate but it sadly how it works!

      At least you live in a city thats getting upgraded.

  3. Avatar photo Dennis Knell says:

    BT installed FTTP in Milton Keynes as far back as 2013. CityFibre are sharing a lot of the original infrastructure that BT laid. Not such a big story. I was an original trialist.

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5473)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2525)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1780)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)

Helpful ISP Guides and Tips

Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon