CityFibre Complete Binley Woods FTTP Broadband Rollout
Network operator CityFibre has completed their deployment of a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 1,018 homes in the suburban village of Binley Woods (Warwickshire), which only started in August 2022 and is an extension of their existing network in nearby Coventry.
The project, which was delivered via civil engineering firm Callan, was originally planned to complete by late 2022 and so it appears to have taken a little bit longer than expected. But confusingly, CityFibre’s announcement isn’t sure how much it cost to build. The original announcement put the figure at £500,000, which seems to be about right, but today’s one says that and also gives a figure of £2m for the same thing (we’ve had it confirmed that £500k is the correct figure).
Speaking of the Binley Woods project, Neal Wright, CityFibre Area Manager, said: “The fact that the rollout was completed in Binley Woods in the space of 76 days is a remarkable achievement. It’s now one of the best-connected places in the country thanks to the full fibre infrastructure that our team has installed across the village.”
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We should add that Openreach also intend to build FTTP in the same area.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Hooray, well done Cityfibre!
Keep up the good work building the business and infrastructure before Greg Mesch sells to Virgin Media and everyone’s made redundant.
@Howard
Thanks but no need to rub it in. Still trying to work out how I feel about working hard helping to build Cityfibre just to benefit the company that’s going to buy it and throw us on the unemployment pile.
Currently feeling very disappointed and betrayed.
Honestly, I’d say although it’s been discussed, lots of things “get discussed”- or even get to publicly being announced as desired, doesn’t mean it will happen.
If it did happen, I think VM would use CF to continue expanding where they don’t have capacity under their FTTP network brand.
Either way, I hope it doesn’t happen and they find a way to make CF work. Ignore the trolls. Good luck^
@Matt
Do you really think that when Virgin buy CF they’ll keep Cityfibre’s staff on and it’ll be one big happy party?
Everyone that visits this site knows the Comms business is cut throat and highly competitive. Companies have to be lean, mean and streamlined to survive.
Unfortunately the big money men at the top don’t care if you’ve got a mortgage or a family to keep.
Sad but true.
By the way, US bankers from Liontree have been hired to get involved with the purchase, try and deny it but I’m afraid it’s happening.
It’s okay. You can put your axe down now.
It’s just talk for now.
For what it’s worth Liberty Global buying CityFibre would be very weird. The more I think about it the less it makes sense.
In the meantime business carries on and the build carries on.
You folks work for a company that is owned by a bunch of private equity firms and has a ton of debt. There was always a high chance it’d be sold if they thought that either it was the right time or that they needed to cut their losses. I’m sorry that this either wasn’t made clear to you or you weren’t aware.
You can’t be angry at the CEO either. It’s not his call whether the business is sold, it’s down to the owners.
‘CITYFIBRE IS BASED IN LONDON AND IS JOINTLY OWNED BY ANTIN INFRASTRUCTURE PARTNERS, GOLDMAN SACHS ASSET MANAGEMENT, MUBADALA INVESTMENT COMPANY AND INTEROGO HOLDING.’
Absolutely none of them could care less about you. Please take the skills you’ve learned and the experience you have and move onto your next opportunity. There are no jobs for life anymore, and certainly not when the business is owned by investors purely in it for the money, no social involvement.
If you end up being made redundant or think you might be it’s a downer but it’s also an opportunity. You’re a better potentially employee than you were before CityFibre, and can potentially demand a higher salary and package.
The industry is still bubbling: have a looksie at opportunities elsewhere now!
I agree completely with ‘Reality Bytes’.
Try and look at it as an opportunity to move onto something better, as a potential employee (with more skills and experience) for another company.
Best of luck.
Yes I forgot that part. I wish all of you well in your future endeavours regardless of whether CF is sold or not.
Your skills are valuable and marketable. You’ll be okay 🙂
@Being realistic
Absolutely not. But also the VM network is a a mess of amalgamation. They have the opportunity to uncouple that mess and move it into a “cleaner network” (Which is what CF should already be)
If you’ve got a big pile of mess, or a small pile but its clean (and efficient?) then which looks best for long term strength? CF staff will be the best placed for the new network. They could of course go the Vodafone route, merge the lot into a bigger, messier pile and then spend the next decade dealing with bottlenecks and poor design.
Any sensible business would cut: HR/Payroll/back of house services – and merge functional teams keeping expertise in both if they can. Liberty probably won’t be rushing I don’t think.
VMo2 were looking at TalkTalk not long before. It feels like Liberty have £3bn sitting in their pocket they want to throw around. CF is in a vulnerable position because of it’s debt, but it also has a good amount of asset and good take up shows its value.
Maybe VMo2 could spend the cash on improving their mobile and fixed line networks. (Doubt 🙂 )
The other option is CF just gets “rebranded” NexFibre, and VM get their paws on their own network and CF’s, and they run with a chunk of the team that already has a proven track record of delivering network deployment. I doubt that would go down too well with other ISPs on CF though.
There’s many ways to skin this cat. BUT it’s just talk at the moment.
Matt says: “CF is in a vulnerable position because of it’s debt, but it also has a good amount of asset and good take up shows its value.”
Come on… Good take up? Who told you that?
@Robert J
TBB puts them network-wide at approx 8%. but the rollout speed is skewing that figure. Older complete areas it put at 23% (Stirling) and 27% (Milton Keynes)… From Jan this year – Which is superb.
Some of the smaller players on CF seem to be struggling (Giganet, what happened to support? guessing this is the fallout of Fern merging units) but it could also just be growing pains. Downside of having lots of smaller ISPs, I guess.
@Matt Not sure I’d say 23% or even 27% take up is superb?
If take up was superb I’d expect them to see profit on the horizon and doubt they’d be putting the business up for sale, however as we all know, they’re bleeding money, it’s simply not sustainable.
If Cityfibre had spent less time whining and lodging complaints about Openreach cutting their prices and more time concentrating on their sales and marketing, then maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess.
Not sure CityFibre’s regulatory team took a break from sales and marketing to complain about Openreach’s Equinox pricing.
They’ve corrected to £500k.
That is one of the really easy villages that are right down at the bottom in terms of cost per premises. It’s basically the a few longer roads and their side roads all clumped together and the job is done. It’s separated from Coventry proper by one road.
Would have been surprising if they hadn’t built to it and expect to see plenty of these. This was actually cheaper on average than the rest of the Coventry build will be.