CityFibre Start £42m FTTP Broadband Build in South Tyneside
Network operator CityFibre has today announced that they’ve finally entered the construction phase of their £42 million project to deploy a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network across South Tyneside (Tyne and Wear) in North East England. The operator is already working in neighbouring Gateshead.
The first building work – supported by local contractor GCU UK Ltd – is taking place in the Laygate area of the town. In the Dean Road area, recent path reinstatement works led by the Council and full fibre installation by CityFibre have also been combined to minimise disruption and the need for separate works.
The work forms part of the operator’s wider ambition 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). CityFibre has so far passed 2.8 million homes (up from 2.6m in late March 2023), but only 2.4 million of those are currently considered to be fully Ready for Service by an ISP (up from 2.3m).
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The project is expected to be completed by 2025, but the first services will typically start to go live for people to take advantage of much sooner. But it does have to be said that Cityfibre aren’t exactly the fastest alternative network provider when it comes to putting their network live, post-build.
Steph Carter-Smith, CityFibre’s Partnership Manager for South Tyneside, said:
“Our full fibre rollout is continuing to gain momentum across the North East, and we are excited to see our plans now progressing in South Tyneside. Delivering lightning-fast and reliable broadband to homes and businesses across the area is a huge undertaking, but once the network is built, it will serve the community’s increasing connectivity needs for years to come.
We have been working with our build partner GCU for many years, and know that they will deliver the project quickly, with as little disruption as possible to residents. I would like to thank the local community for their patience as we work to make South Tyneside a leader in digital connectivity.”
In terms of local gigabit-capable competition, it’s worth noting that Virgin Media (VMO2) will be CityFibre’s main competitor in this area. Openreach does have some growing FTTP coverage, but it’s still at a fairly low level. Finally, Grain have a little bit of full fibre coverage, albeit mostly around the South Shields 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 and Linkedin.
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2.4 million premises ready for service…
Anyone know how many premises are actually connected and using the CF network?
I guess they’ve got to keep everyone busy working while the CEO is searching for someone to buy Cityfibre.
Lol, haters gonna hate
Must be tiresome posting this dirge on every CF article.
Does make you wonder why it was “accidentally” leaked that Greg Mesch was in talks with VM02/Nexfibre.
I would guess the investors are looking to exit and what better way to spread the word that there for sale.
There’s always one negative post when it comes to altnets especially cityfibre.
You’d all be rocking throttled VM broadband or openreach vdsl if these altnets never sprung up.
I reckon in terms of CF investment they wanted enough invested they can win BDUK contracts and once they’ve tendered and won a few private investment will slow down.
Interesting how it was only 6 months ago Cityfibre announced hundreds of redundancies…
Rumours are it’s not a very place, staff are leaving and now they’re having to recruit again. I’ve seen many jobs advertised on their website.
Sounds like a real rollercoaster ride.
Those people leaving are ones being made redundant and the jobs on the board are the restructured roles available to those at risk. 400 staff at risk with 200 vacancies being reopened.
Telecoms world is knackered with cost cutting, CF, hyperoptic, vm02 and I’ve heard even openreach to make further cuts this year alone.
If I was unemployed and desperate for a job I’d happily take a position at Cityfibre, otherwise I’d be very wary of leaving a job to join them.
To me it’s obvious things could get rocky in the near future.
It was rumoured back in March that Virgin Media wanted to acquire City Fibre however not that City Fibre was looking to sell. If City Fibre were looking desperate to sell then that would drive down the sale price as it would become a buyers market.
I personally wouldn’t won’t VM02 (or their parent) to get CityFibre. Ideally in my world you’d get at least 3 big national access networks that all do llu (or whatever you call the fibre equivalent) or have a wholesale division