CityFibre Begins £3m Full Fibre Broadband Build in Whittlesey

Network operator Cityfibre has announced that they’ve started to deploy their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the Cambridgeshire (England) market town and civil parish of Whittlesey, which is expected to cost the operator around £3m to complete.

The overall project in Whittlesey, which is being delivered by civil engineering partner Granemore Group, is expected to reach completion sometime during 2023. But the first services will go live for people to take advantage of much sooner.

Most of the initial build will start in the west side of the town, which isn’t a huge surprise because CityFibre has already invested £35m in nearby Peterborough, where more than 67,000 homes (c.85% of the city’s residential properties) are now said to be able to access their full fibre internet services. The rollout is also underway in Yaxley and March.

The latest build forms part of the operator’s wider £5bn+ investment programme 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, CityFibre has already covered 2 million UK premises – with 1.8m Ready For Service (RFS) via a supporting ISP (here).

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

“We’re so excited to see work getting started on our £3m digital transformation project in Whittlesey. Our full fibre network will equip the town with the capabilities needed to thrive in the digital age – it will see residents enjoy unbeatable streaming at home and unlock ample productivity and innovation benefits for local businesses.

As our team of builders install the network in Whittlesey, we ask the local community to bear with us and we assure them that any short-term disruption will pay off tremendously in the long-term.”

In terms of gigabit-capable competitors, CityFibre will find themselves running up against Virgin Media’s (VMO2) existing network in the town and Openreach are also rolling out FTTP to the area, although we don’t know how extensive the latter’s deployment will be. FibreNest also has some small coverage across one of Persimmon Homes new build sites.