CityFibre Start £30m Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Rochdale

CityFibre UK has today announced that they’ve started the construction phase of their £30m project to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network in the Greater Manchester town of Rochdale (England), which is being supported by civil engineering firm Network PLUS.

The overall project, which is expected to reach “almost every home and business” in the town, aims to reach completion by 2024, but the first services will go live – in gradual phases – for people to take advantage of much sooner. Once areas do go live then the first ISPs to pledge support for the new network in Rochdale will include Vodafone (Gigafast Broadband), TalkTalk (Future Fibre) and Zen Internet (Zen is based in the town).

Once again, the new build forms part of CityFibre’s wider £4.9bn investment 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). So far, the operator has already covered 1.7 million UK premises – with 1.5m ‘Ready For Service‘ via a supporting ISP (here).

Steve Thorpe, CityFibre’s Area Manager for Rochdale, said:

“This is an exciting time for both CityFibre and Rochdale as work on the new Full Fibre network starts today. Once our network is built, residents and businesses will be able to access the best possible digital connectivity. A contributing factor to the growth of Rochdale is using the opportunities that digital innovation and transformation provides.

People can take advantage of those new digital technologies and better their lives. It’s important to remember that any short-term disruption will pay off tremendously in the long-term – once the network’s built, it will serve the community’s connectivity needs for decades to come.”

In terms of CityFibre’s gigabit-capable rivals in the town, the operator’s primary competition will come from Virgin Media (VMO2), which already reaches most of the local premises. But Openreach are also working to rollout FTTP broadband across a big chunk of the town. However, given the size of Rochdale, it’s surprising that there hasn’t been more interest from alternative networks.