CityFibre Prep £2m FTTP Broadband Build for Village of Yaxley

The village and civil parish of Yaxley in Cambridgeshire (England), which is home to a population of over 9,000, has just become one of CityFibre’s smallest builds after they confirmed their plan to invest £2m as part of their ongoing deployment of gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP technology.

The announcement states that CityFibre has hired the Granemore Group to conduct the related civil engineering work in the village, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise because they recently completed a much larger build for the operator in the nearby city of Peterborough (here).

As usual, this build forms part of the operator’s wider £4.9bn investment project, which has so far enabled their full fibre network to cover 1.7 million UK premises – with 1.5m ‘Ready For Service‘ via a supporting ISP (here). The aim is to cover up to 8 million premises – across around 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here), but they also plan to reach into rural areas via Project Gigabit (here).

Rebecca Stephens, CityFibre’s Regional Partnership Director, said:

“Having completed the primary-build of our Full Fibre network in Peterborough, we’re delighted to see so many residents and businesses already enjoying reliable, lightning-speed internet services. Now, even more people across the area will gain access to the best available digital connectivity through our new rollout in Yaxley.

Full Fibre technology is vital for the UK’s long-term economic growth as it will help boost productivity and innovation. We’re thrilled to be able to bring our best-in-class network to Yaxley, which will future-proof the area’s digital infrastructure for generations to come.”

The decision to build across Yaxley makes a lot of sense as, at present, the only real gigabit-capable rival in the village is Virgin Media, and it’s also fairly straightforward to extend out from CityFibre’s existing network. Openreach does have a tiny bit of FTTP coverage within the community, but it seems confined to the local business park and the village does not yet appear on that operator’s wider rollout plan. We don’t currently know of any other operators that are targeting the village.