CityFibre Face Trouble in Edinburgh After Full Fibre Build Breaks Bridge

Locals living near to the Shandon Place and Ashley Terrace bridge in Edinburgh (Scotland), which passes over a former railway line, have vented fury at CityFibre after the operator’s rollout of a new full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network broke the bridge during unauthorised work – leaving it closed since January.

Just to recap. CityFibre is currently investing £100m to deploy their new gigabit-capable broadband network across the city of Edinburgh, which has been running for a few years and recently started to be extended into more of the city centre and coastal areas. Once fully completed, the operator’s fibre network in the city is expected to be 2100km long.

As part of that, they also needed to dig a new trench to lay their optical fibre cables across the Shandon Place and Ashley Terrace road bridge, which is owned by Network Rail. But something went wrong and CityFibre’s contractors ended up going too deep and dislodging stonework on the underside of the bridge.

Just to make matters worse, the City of Edinburgh Council has now said (here) that the “works were not authorised by the Council … there was no valid works notice on 16th January covering the point of excavation“. The situation, when combined with other gripes from locals against the problems caused by some of their rollout in the city, has resulted in a serious response from the local authority.

In short, CityFibre have been issued with a ‘Stage 1 Improvement Notice’ under the New Roads and Street Works Act, which means they must now achieve a minimum 90% pass rate for all sample inspections of their Signs, Lighting and Guarding as well as their reinstatements.

The operator was initially also “instructed to cease all work in progress on the network on 17th February, to make safe all defects, backfill any excavations and not commence any new works“. CityFibre is now understood to have produced an Improvement Plan to tackle the issues and move their build forward.

Paul Wakefield, CityFibre’s Build Manager for Edinburgh, said:

“Following full fibre deployment by CityFibre on Ashley Terrace and Shandon Place, the bridge which spans the old railway line has been closed and has temporary traffic restrictions in place for additional reinstatement works. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and to reassure residents that we are working closely with the council and Network Rail to find a solution to reopen the bridge as soon as possible.”

Work on CityFibre’s wider build resumed a couple of weeks ago, but it remains unclear when the bridge itself will be fixed, and local businesses have complained about a significant loss in trade. A report to the city council last year revealed that the same operator had received more fixed penalty notices (total of 176 – almost a third of all fines issued) than any other public utility firm for breaching roadworks requirements.

In the long run, the ability to access affordable gigabit broadband speeds should make all of this effort worthwhile and may even boost the value of local housing, as well as the economy. On the other hand, operators do have a responsibility to conduct such work properly, and too many mistakes by contractors is not a good look. But they appear to be moving in the right direction now.

The project forms part of CityFibre’s wider effort to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) – across over 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). The operator has so far covered a total of 2.5 million premises (passing 22,000 premises per week), but only 2.2 million of those are currently considered to be ‘Ready for Service‘ by an ISP.