Summary of ISP Choices on CityFibre’s UK FTTP Broadband Network
CityFibre has spent the past few years building their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to 2.6 million premises (2.3m Ready for Service) and slowly solidifying their position as the UK’s third-largest infrastructure player after Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media. Suffice to say, it’s time for a summary of ISP choices on their network.
At present the operator, which is being funded by around £2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt, aims to cover up to 8 million premises (mostly in urban areas) – across over 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). But they may well continue to grow even after this, possibly reaching 9-10 million premises, although a solid rollout plan for that has yet to be confirmed.
All of this means that they’re fast becoming a serious player in the UK market, although trying to gauge the consumer ISP options on their network can be tricky. This is due to the fact that supporting Internet Service Providers (ISP) aren’t all live or available across every location they serve, yet.
Some of this issue has to do with historic exclusivity agreements between specific providers (e.g. Vodafone) and CityFibre for certain areas, but in other cases an ISP may have only invested enough to serve a limited number of locations. Whatever the reason, this can result in a patchwork of availability between supporting ISPs, which may in turn cause consumer confusion.
On top of all that, a growing number of ISPs are now supporting multiple alternative network platforms, which makes it difficult for even us to know whether the package being presented for a specific location is based off CityFibre’s network or that of another operator. Often we can tell the difference, but not always, particularly with providers that are poor at communicating such details (many of them). This is important because package details and prices do differ between networks.
Summary of CityFibre ISPs
Despite the challenges, we’ve endeavoured to create a brief summary of CityFibre’s ISPs below, which focuses on how much each of them charge for their top gigabit class (1Gbps) package – often advertised via an average download of 900Mbps+. By default, we’ll focus on data-only packages (no phone) and will pick the cheapest option (i.e. usually the one with the longest contract term). The list is ordered by price, but we exclude temporary short-term offers / discounts, such as “x months of free service” (too tedious to track).
Take note that the operator’s wholesale products typically promise symmetric speeds, thus uploads should match the download rate. But due to the requirements of Ofcom’s speed code and the desire to have a single package for different networks, some ISPs may advertise a slower upload (i.e. underneath this it will still be a symmetric product on CityFibre’s network).
The good news is that several of CityFibre’s ISPs have confirmed their delivery of, or ambition to deliver, national scale availability across the operator’s network. As a result, we’ve opted to list those providers separately at the top, although other ISPs may have similar plans and perhaps haven’t informed us or confirmed them yet (e.g. we think AAISP is heading in this direction).
CityFibre ISPs with National UK Availability (1Gbps Plan)
| ISP | Monthly Price | Contract | Setup |
| TalkTalk | £36 | 18 Months | £0 |
| Zen Internet | £40 | 24 Months | £0 |
| Giganet | £40 | 12 Months | £0 |
| Vodafone | £44 | 24 Months | £0 |
In total, CityFibre currently claims to have attracted support from 36 ISPs, although at present our own UK ISP Listings database only covers around 26. This is because some of those that remain may be more business centric (not covered), or might not have informed us that they exist (Submit ISP), while others could have made it too difficult to identify their CF availability or packages (e.g. Factco, YouFibre, WestFibre etc).
As a side note, it is possible to migrate between CityFibre based ISPs, but this is currently a Losing Provider Led (LPL) process, where you’d need to start the switch by contacting your existing ISP first. Ofcom’s new Gaining Provider Led (GPL) One Touch Switch (OTS) migration process was supposed to change that from 3rd April 2023, but that is now facing significant delays due to implementation problems.
Take note that special offers change all the time, thus what is considered to be the cheapest provider now may vary from week to week. We also won’t be returning to keep the prices in this article up-to-date, as we’ll use this report to help track historic changes and simply write a new article if we feel an update is needed.
CityFibre ISPs with Patchy UK Availability (1Gbps Plan)
| ISP | Monthly Price | Contract | Setup |
| Toob (Portsmouth only) | £25 | 18 Months | £0 |
| Brillband | £35 | 18 Months | £35 |
| FibreHop | £36 | 12 Months | £65 |
| Leetline | £36.99 | 24 Months | £60 |
| Link Broadband | £37 | 12 Months | £8.50 |
| Yayzi Broadband | £39 | 18 Months | £0 |
| No One | £39.99 | 24 Months | £0 |
| Zybre | £39.99 | 12 Months | £29 |
| Pure Broadband (Connexin) | £45 | 24 Months | £50 |
| RunFibre * | £45 | 12 Months | £0 |
| Octaplus | £49.99 | ? | £0 |
| Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) | £57 | 1 Month | £10 |
| Gigabit Networks | £59 | 18 Months | £49 |
| Legend Fibre (acquired by Octaplus) | £59.99 | 24 Months | £0 |
| iDNET | £60 | 18 Months | £0 |
| BrawBand | £64.95 | 24 Months | £0 |
| Juice Broadband | £70 | 24 Months | ? |
As we mentioned earlier, there are some significant differences in terms of package features, prices and availability on CityFibre’s network, some of which we’ve highlighted below. But there are also big gaps in our knowledge due, in no small part, to the lack of easily accessible information from some ISPs. But most providers tended to roughly hover around the c.£40 per month mark.
Finally, it’s important to note that we’re not recommending any specific ISPs above. This is thus purely a high level summary and also a way of highlighting the challenges we faced in simply putting such a list together. Over time, CityFibre’s exclusivity agreements should wane and ISP-level availability will improve, which will hopefully help to iron out some of the issues we experienced.
NOTES:
➤ AAISP – Packages come attached to a 1 TeraByte usage cap (£67 if you want 10TB). Doesn’t bundle a free router, like the rest, but does support IPv6.
➤ BrillBand – Serves CityFibre’s locations in Scotland.
➤ FibreHop – Only available to Cheltenham, Leicester, Milton Keynes, Bath (soon) and Swindon.
➤ Gigabit Networks – Focused on the Midlands. Experienced an odd problem when trying to conduct a test order, as under Firefox and Edge we couldn’t get past the availability checker’s address selection page.
➤ RunFibre – Only in Wolverhampton and Gloucester.
➤ Toob – Cityfibre coverage in Portsmouth.
➤ Vodafone – Existing mobile customers can save an extra £3 per month on the price we display above. WiFi 6 capable router.
➤ Giganet – Currently offering 3 months of free service. Adding a Static IP is just £1 extra. WiFi 6 capable router.
➤ YouFibre – Currently only sells via CityFibre outside Middlesbrough (North Yorkshire), but we struggled to find a working postcode for checking. Elsewhere, they harness parent operator Netomnia’s network.
➤ BrawBand – website points to availability in Glasgow, Inverness, Renfrewshire and Edinburgh (Scotland). Packages also included 1 year of Amazon Prime Video and a Static IP address.
➤ Toob – Prices their own-build FTTP the same as their CityFibre based package.
➤ iDNET – Includes Static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, but doesn’t bundle an included router.
Just a final reminder that the data above was all gathered in early February, thus some of the price, package and availability details may have since changed. It’s not easy keeping track of a market this complex.
UPDATE:
Take note that TalkTalk’s CityFibre price changed from £36 to £49 at the start of March, just after we finished writing this. The prices in this article need to be maintained for historical accuracy, thus we’re mentioning it here as it occurred just outside our editing period.
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 and Linkedin.
« London Full Fibre ISP G.Network Tests Nokia’s 25Gbps PON Tech
Wonder when CityFibre will go over the existing network & upgrade it to XGS-PON
Starting from this month sometime.
£7.3bn of capital for 8m connections is £900 per property passed. Does anybody dare to do some simple financial modelling using that?
If you do and you’re financially literate, then wear welding goggles to avoid having your retinas seared off.
Some financial literacy would help you understand that a business doesn’t spend its entire raised capital on a single item. That also pays for establishing all of the other operations of the business.
Come again? I understand that I suspect a whole lot better than you do, and What they spend it on is irrelevant, it is precisely the issue that capital employed per connection (in CF’s wholesale model) defines the challenge.
CF have their own operating cost, they’ll be charging ISPs for infrastructure provision, and with what’s left over CF have to cover their cost of capital, which I’d suggest is around 12%. Above that and they’re profitable and viable, below that and they’re destroying shareholder value, even if their P&L shows a profit.
And the problem here is that if they pass 8m households and we generously assume that they get 50% take up across their various ISPs, then they have £1,800 of capital per paying retail customer (that the customers are with the ISPs matters not). And since OR and VM have massively lower capital per customer, CF will be notably more expensive. If there’s an OR FTTP option, or the VM/LG wholesale network plan comes to anything, then many ISPs will move their customers onto those networks.
As a rough guide the incrementally higher cost to a customer of a CF connection averaging £1,800 capital per connection needs to be £13 a month higher than OR or VM’s averages. If there’s actually no other option, then £13 a month extra compared to OR FTTC or worse is not that bad a deal. But where there is a choice, £13 a month extra is not going to be viable in the market. En masse, customers won’t pay it, nor will ISPs want to offer it.
@PW
The revenue to repay that capital can only come from connected customers. Capital deployed per premises passed is entirely the correct metric.
Now work out the number if take up is only 1 in 3 of those premises.
It all seems very messy and obviously confusing for consumers which could result in poor take-up percentages.
Can’t help thinking Cityfibre would have been better setting up their own ISP.
Very different skills and tools needed to be a retail ISP, despite my reservations about the finances, CF are sticking to what they’re good at, which is building infrastructure and running it wholesale. Getting into retail branding and expensive marketing is a costly and unwelcome distraction, and requires much more customer-facing IT, customer services agents, processes etc, billing capabilities, bad debt management, onboarding and offboarding accounts, a whole shed-load of regulation.
50% also assumes that they will be the only Altnet in a given area. Where I live Openreach have already deployed their network, Swift Fibre are currently installing theirs and I am now getting adverts popping up on Facebook from Hey! Broadband that they are going to be coming as well. In the street where I live Openreach switched on their network 20 months ago and currently 36% of properties already appear to be connected. The current situation seems to be total madness. The whole situation smacks of yet another financial bubble waiting to burst.
What they’re offering is simply too expensive.
The majority of the general public don’t want, don’t need and don’t want to pay for a 1Gbps connection (not yet anyway).
For most households 150Mbps would be plenty fast enough and they’d be happy to pay around £25 per month.
If a homeowner has a FTTC connection and they can stream TV, play games, have Zoom meetings, etc. then why would they upgrade to FTTP?
In general, it’s only when the TV stream starts buffering and the kids start complaining about slow internet that people will start looking at faster options.
If Cityfibre can’t offer slower/cheaper connections whilst still make it profitable and stay in business, then they need to re-evaluate their business model.
You can absolutely have a slower 150 connection on a CityFibre ISP for around £25. £28 at BrawBand for example.
ISPs using the CityFibre network DO offer cheaper options.
For instance Giganet will provide 150Mb for £26.66 taking into account their intro offer.
This article is using 1Gb *JUST* as an illustration,
it is not a definitive list of options for practical reasons.
There is no technology that will provide a reliable 150Mbps symmetric connection that is also meaningfully cheaper than fibre in the ground once you’re at the point where you are building a new network. In fact by being able to sell 1Gbps+ services you’re letting users who want the best effectively subsidise the more frugal subscribers, as CityFibre’s costs aren’t meaningfully different between the different speed options.
Do Zen offer different prices to different punters? I can’t get £40 where I am, I see £55. And Broadband are £50, not £65.
BrawBand – curse the spell check.
Thats why they dont transparently publish their prices, they want to lynch customers where competition isn’t as prevalent. Their cultist virtue signaling has to be paid somehow. Reason to simply ignore them
I believe Zen sell Cityfibre cheaper than Openreach
Precisely, Anon, the difference in pricing is Openreach vs CityFibre.
A quick check in a CityFibre area here that’s allegedly has Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen available gives the following pricing for gigabit:
Zen: £55.00
TalkTalk: £49
Vodafone: £46
Only Vodafone mention symmetrical speeds.
Reality Bytes, Zen are now advertising symmetric speeds on CityFibre. For whatever reason, Zen don’t think they offer CityFibre at the address you searched on.
Plain and simple.
Give me 150Mbps Unlimited for £20 per month, no messing around, no mid contract price rise, no silly small print.
I’d be more than happy and I’m sure most other people would be too.
£20 a month leaves nobody with any profit. You do see some circa £20 a month offers, but be assured they’re hugely loss making. The cost of running any competent customer accounting system and associated customer services is about a tenner a month including IT costs. Add to that averages of customer acquisition costs (marketing, incentives, on-boarding) over customer life and you’d probably find another £3-15 a month depending on the churn rates and profligacy of acquisition pricing offers. Assume £7 a month for those, so now we’ve had £17 out of your £20 a month before we’ve touched cost of sales. Taking Zen Internet as benchmark, their cost of sales averages about £34 per customer per month. Those are **averages**, and all companies will look at their **marginal** costs which are lower when pricing, but for the long term it’s the averages that need to stack up.
Will all these ISP’s remain on the Cityfibre network when Virgin Media take over?
I don’t want the hassle of signing up, having a cable run to my house just to have to jump networks shortly after.
That’s still speculation. Virgin will make a mess of whatever they do regardless as per anything else they do.
Hmmm, think I’ll stick with Openreach.
I’d expect these ISPs to remain even if Liberty Global buys CityFibre. VMO2/Liberty has expressed interest in the UK in becoming a wholesale player, and this would play into that directly.
Even that is far from a done deal though – it’s literally just rumoured at the moment. The proposal would need to be initially approved by LGs board/major shareholders, then go through all the relevant due diligence, and a price would then need to be agreed. After this Liberty would need to wait for approval from the Competition and Markets Authority, which would likely take months, and if that approval ever gets given it would then take at least 6 months to a year to even start integrating the two businesses on a commercial level.
Long story short, even if Liberty Global expressed an interest in moving forward today, you’d be looking at 12-18 months before anything meaningful happens.
@Jon
Would we know if the the sale had already been agreed and was in progress?
Will we get any warning or will we just wake up one morning to an announcement that Cityfibre had been sold?
There’s always noises in the banking market when a sizeable company is to be sold, sometimes they’re accurate, sometimes they’re not. Speaking from personal experience a deal can go a long way through parallel negotiations with multiple parties, there’s often a final offers auction, but even then the winner has to satisfy themselves that everything is in order before the two sides legal teams will commit to it being final and irrevocable (and even then if new facts emerge the deal can be voided or reopened).
For people outside the very tight circle of deal insiders like you and I, we’ll never know until if CF is being sold and to whom until a deal is publicly announced.
I just checked and TalkTalk is still offering 900mb/s FTTP over CityFibre for £36 but its a 24 month contract.
I think it has always been like this. I have checked it off and on. I checked it early march and it was saying that for definite. So I am not sure where these numbers are coming from that it is now £49 a month.
My friend was with Zybre on the Cityfibre network.
Cityfibre told him the connection was going to be terminated as Zybre were in breach of contract and he should sign up to another ISP, which of course he did immediately.
Then it became apparent the information from Cityfibre was incorrect.
Now he’s paying double, stuck with 2 contracts and a very large bill to terminate one.
He’s had great difficulty getting it resolved or getting any help and he’s now had to take it to the ombudsman.
This sounds like a mistake, there’s some contact details for CF via specific subdomain on the cityfibre site.
https://cityfibre.com/zybreairbroadband
If they’re having difficulty with Zybre directly.
Also to add, because of the sale of Zybre – they’ll have done this based on customer numbers.
https://www.zybre.co.uk/important-information-regarding-zybre/
Looks like Zybre/Home telecom are being scumbags and charging early termination as it’ll affect their “Deal”. I’m guessing if you weren’t quick enough out the door to terminate that will be why they’re holding other customers to ransom.
@Matt
I don’t get it, why are you calling Zybre scumbags when it was Cityfibre who misinformed him causing him to now have 2 contracts?
Nobody misinformed him though. Zybre hadn’t been paying CityFibre so they kicked them off their network and all of their customers. People had no internet and CityFibre weren’t letting Zybre back on their network. Zybre were not informing anyone and people had no internet for a significant period of time and were complaining to CityFibre. It was reasonable to tell them to go elsewhere. Zybre now after two months doing a deal with TalkTalk to offer internet through them is not good enough. I would be spitting blood with rage if I had no internet for two months. Anyone would have went elsewhere in that time.
@Anthony
Then after all that, Cityfibre still allowing Zybre to use their network?
Doesn’t make sense!?
Moral of the story is… Just stick to Openreach for reliability, stability and an ISP that’s isn’t going to disappear into the ether.
@John, their announcement said they are in talks with using TalkTalk Business connection not CityFibre directly.
@Moral of the Story: No the true Moral is don’t go with very small ISPs. go with the large ones like TalkTalk, Vodafone or Zen.
I note the “?” in the Octaplus contract length. AFAICT they offer the customer a choice between a 12, 18, or 24 month. They’re all fixed price contracts. Their 12 month contract has a set up fee.
It would be worth mentioning which providers offer their service over CGNAT as that would drop its value significantly compared to one that does not.
CGNAT or PPPOE are ISP choices (and not necessarily mutually exclusive), so that wouldn’t make any difference to CityFibre’s value. Both are supported by CF. And I suspect that even the ISP’s choice wouldn’t affect that ISP’s value – all most customers want is uninterrupted streaming, glitch free cat videos, or low latency for FPS gaming. There’s almost as many people been into space as actually care about the problems of CGNAT.*
* This fact may require a reference or backup source.
What a load of noise @Andrew G.
I have a requirement for a static public IPv4 address on my service, as I’m sure a minority of others do as well. Knowing which ISPs support my requirement is a reasonable request. PPPoE has nothing to do with it.
CGNAT means you cannot play any multiplayer console games for that reason alone people will feel its worthless.
Why a connection on CGNAT does not allow multiplayer games?
You will have a double NAT on your games console from the CGNAT. As a result many multiplayer games wont work at all. Or very poorly. Most likely at all.
What does this mean, so what happens when I start a game of Call of Duty? Will it not let me in? Lag spikes?
One of two things will happen, it won’t let you connect to the COD server at all as you are double NAT. If it does let you connect your NAT will be deemed as Strict by call of duty which means you will be at a significant disadvantage in the game and also most people won’t be able to connect to you and you won’t be able to connect to many people.
Sounds like CGNAT is the worst thing ever and not fit for purpose when it can’t do such a basic thing. When I hear people complaining about it they just say they can’t access their internet from outside the property, which is a very niche usage
Is there anyone with any defense counter points? Is CGNAT totally useless for gaming?
What a load of rubbish. This only applies if the network hasn’t implemented IPv6 (which all newer consoles are compatible with). CGNAT only affects older IPv4 compatible systems. If you are struggling with CGNAT then it’s probably time to upgrade your tech. NAT is not an issue on IPv6 as all devices have a public address.
Its not a load of rubbish as the few ISPs I have seen that offer CGNAT also say they don’t currently offer IPv6.
Swapped from vodafone to talktalk as it kept giving me vodafone india ips for some reason
but i’m now on the 1gbps package it claims 150 upload but i usually see 800 or more
Very happy overall with the service and router (eero 6e) that comes with it is very good.
Is it true that Cityfibre is partly owned or financed by the United Arab Emirates government?
If so then I will never have anything to do with them, just my personal feeling.
In my opinion they should not be allowed to own or partly own infrastructure in our democratic country or profit from our public.
You don’t have to dig very deep to find very disturbing behaviour… Human rights, etc.
I don’t wish to be part of it.
Openreach uses Huawei, a company directly under the Chinese Communist Party’s military who are just getting ready to invade Taiwan so good luck with your moral boycott
Giganet do not offer network wide static IP atleast here in their recent expansion here in Glasgow it is all CGNAT with no timeline for offering (or if ever) Static IP will be available.
See here for the discussion on the forums about it. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/anyone-on-giganet.38313/page-5
BrawBand have some embarrassing, cringe inducing marketing on their website. Claiming broadband would have been better if it had been invented by Scottish people. Some blog post stating how Iranian people are similar to Scottish people during the World Cup. What on earth does that have to do with broadband? They seem more interested in pushing a political narrative for “pure” Scots than promoting a good broadband service for all.
Same thing with Zen with their carbon nonsense. In the long run, companies that push a woke agenda at the expense of their customers will suffer, companies that just focus on great value will succeed
Yoons are total snowflakes.
It’s mostly a play on the word ‘brawband’ which is Scots i.e. one of Scotland’s three native languages.
You are clearly someone who freaks out when Scots or Gaelic is used on something like road signs.
David, who mentioned anything about the name of the company or the language used?
By the way why would I get freaked out by street signs in Scots Gaelic in areas where it is a native language?
If you reply, hopefully it will be minus any personal attack.