CityFibre Extends Full Fibre Broadband to 2 Million UK Homes

Network operator CityFibre has today announced that they’ve covered 2 million UK homes with their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network (up from 1.9m in August), which represents 25% of their 8 million target. Better yet, they passed the second million some three times faster than their first million.

The achievement forms part of the company’s £5bn+ (debt and equity) programme to cover up to 8 million premises – across around 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – with full fibre by the end of 2025 (here). This is also expected to include coverage for over 800k businesses, 400k public sector sites and 250k 5G access points. The operator also intends to grow into rural areas via the £5bn Project Gigabit rollout.

However, we should point out that – of the 2 million homes passed to date – approximately 1.8 million are actually considered to be ‘Ready For Service‘ (RFS), which means that residents can place an order with one of over 30 ISPs. The 200,000 premises difference reflects locations where CityFibre says their network has been built, but ISPs have yet to adopt it (there’s usually a time lag here).

The operator states that they’re now the UK’s “second largest full fibre network” after Openreach, although it’s worth nothing that Virgin Media’s (VMO2) FTTP rollout and XGS-PON upgrade of their existing Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network should see them reach 23 million premises by around 2028 (here and here). But being the country’s third-largest full fibre network would still be a huge achievement for CityFibre.

Overall the operator is currently building at a rate of over 100,000 premises passed per month across 75 metropolitan areas and they’re still ramping-up.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“As the UK’s second largest fibre network, we’re thrilled to now provide two million households with access to the nation’s fastest and most reliable broadband services.

As the nation’s true digital infrastructure challenger, we’re determined to keep raising the bar with better products, better services, and better economics. This won’t just benefit our customers and theirs, it will help unlock innovation and economic growth across the UK.”

Finally, it’s worth noting that CityFibre’s existing FTTP network is currently still based off older GPON technology, but they did recently start the process of upgrading that to a 10Gbps symmetrical capable XGS-PON platform (here). The city of York has already been upgraded to support this, although we’ll have to wait a bit longer before the first multi-gigabit packages for homes begin to surface.

Alternative networks like CityFibre’s have had a major impact in the UK market, not least by helping to push established giants like Openreach and VMO2 to up their game.