CityFibre to Start £17m Rollout of 1Gbps Broadband in Rugby

Network developer CityFibre has today confirmed that they’ll begin the £17 million rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the Warwickshire (England) town of Rugby this month, which aims to reach “almost every home and business locally.”

The project is being backed by one of the operator’s existing civil engineering partners – Callan Connect, which has also worked with CityFibre in other locations, such as Coventry and Solihull. By the looks of it some of their first street works will take place in the Cawston area of the town and the full deployment is then planned to complete during “early 2024“.

The latest build forms part of the operator’s wider £4.9bn 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 1.9 million UK premises – with 1.7m ‘Ready For Service‘ via a supporting ISP.

Area Manager, Neal Wright, said:

“Full fibre is becoming increasingly available across the UK as a result of investment from companies like CityFibre. Because of this, demand for this faster, more resilient and more reliable digital infrastructure is growing rapidly as home broadband users seek to future-proof their connectivity for the technological developments ahead.

We’re really excited to be extending our rollout to Rugby and ensuring its communities can benefit from full fibre too – in the near term and in the decades ahead. We cannot wait for residents and businesses to see what is possible with digital connectivity that propels you forward rather than holds you back.”

As usual, CityFibre will face some competition from gigabit-capable rivals in the town. The location is already extremely well covered by Virgin Media’s broadband network and Openreach currently have a huge FTTP deployment across the same location, with a few tiny deployments by the odd Alternative Network (AltNet) existing at the edges of the town.