CommunityFibre Bring FTTP Broadband to 1Million London Homes
Network builder and UK broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which is rolling out a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across London, has today hit the coverage milestone of 1 million homes passed (up from 720,000 in December 2022) – plus 212,000 businesses on top (i.e. their network footprint expanded by 75% in the last 12 months).
The operator, which also owns ISP Box Broadband – a full fibre network that covers parts of Surrey and West Sussex in England (here), is aiming to reach 2.2 million UK premises by 2024 – more than half of all the homes in London (3.7 million). On top of that, Box Broadband also holds a “goal of delivering fibre to in excess of 250,000 homes by the end of 2024” (not included in CF’s 2.2m target).
In terms of funding, it’s tricky to keep track of CF’s announcements, but they were originally backed by £90m from private investors and Government schemes (e.g. Amber Infrastructure and RPMI Railpen), followed later by £400m via Warburg Pincus and DTCP, and £100m from a syndicate of existing and new banks. Back in October 2022 they also added a new finance facility of £985m – made up of £685m in committed facilities and a further £300m uncommitted accordion (here).
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The provider generally offers consumers symmetrical broadband packages ranging from 150Mbps and all the way up to the dizzy heights of 3Gbps.
Graeme Oxby, CEO of Community Fibre, said:
“As Londoners continue to face pressure on household bills, as well as increasing consumer demand for online access and digital connectivity, we are proud to enable access to faster, cheaper, and more reliable fibre broadband to over one million London properties across the capital.
As well as advancing our target to reach more Londoners with our 100% full fibre network, we will continue to challenge the industry with our innovative offerings, such as setting new out-of-contract pricing standards, which we have capped at £2 across all our packages, as well as providing easy access to our social tariff, which unlike most other broadband providers does not ask consumers to provide proof of eligibility criteria.”
Residential customers typically pay from £20 per month on 24-month term (optional term of 12-months) for a symmetric speed of 150Mbps with an included router (£22 thereafter), which rises to £49 for their top 3Gbps tier (£51 thereafter). On top of that they also have a special tariff that gives you 20Mbps speeds for just £12.50 per month on a 12-month term, which is technically a social tariff, except anybody can take it.
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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CommunityFibre are great in terms of reliability and speed, but their recent decision to v4 address everyone on sub-3Gbps via CGNAT, which was not the case before, has annoyed me.
I get if it was sub-1Gbps packages on CGNAT but only having a proper IPv4 for 3Gpbs+ (or business plans) is a poor move, especially when they have “gaming” as part of the 1Gbps package selling point – and port forwarding isn’t really doable over CGNAT.
When IPv6 is dominant, it makes sense but as of right now, it’s not.
CGNAT seems to becoming standard practice amongst the altnets. Swish Fibre which is building where I live only offer CGNAT and no IP V6 on all but the most expensive “gamers package”.
Sadly Dave is correct.
With the aggressive package pricing and rapid expansion, there’s only so my v4 addresses to go about and CGNAT is one of the only ways to keep things competitive.
As a CF subscriber, I wish a public IP was a cost option on packages but alas, 3gbps will have to be the way to go once my contract expires. Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if the v4 pool runs out for the top pier package. I suspect it’ll shift up to 10Gbps packages once that goes live.
Thing is quite a lot of people (me included) have got things like IP security cameras which we want to remotely access so a proper public ip is a must. I for one will be sticking with BT/OR. Not the cheapest by any means but least there’s a proper IP V4 public address and a full IP V6 implementation. Plus their digital voice service and digital handsets are excellent.
Why is CGNAT bad for gaming? Does it make it better to use a VPN?
@Big Dave, Zzoomm don’t have GCNAT, as far as I know, I was told you can reconise them due to the IP adress range
This is news to me and gives me thoughts about wanting them to install in my street.
They have great pricing for 1gbps and I actually don’t want to go overboard and spend for 3gbps.
Because when a game console connects to a router it will use upnp to open ports so that incoming traffic from the Internet is directed to the console is passed through. Unfortunately if CGNAT is used Incoming traffic will be blocked at the isp’s router and won’t be passed on to your router to pass on to the console.
Stupid question incoming…I’ve got an issue where my work phone (android) and work iPad won’t get authenticator app notifications when on my home (Community Fibre) WiFi, but do when WiFi is off and I’m using mobile data. Could this be the cause? I’m on the 900mbps package.
All other apps on these devices work fine. I have come across an issue with Sky Q and Community Fibre throwing up an OSM wrong/no location when trying to download certain items, resetting the IP address in the Linksys app resolved this but not the issue I’m having with work phone/iPad.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Have you got a package that uses CGNAT or do you have a proper public ip v4 address? If it’s the former that may well be the cause of the problem?
Not sure, how would I find that out? Might it be in the Linksys app or would I have to contact CF?
You really need to get to the configuration page of your router to see what ip address it has on the wan (Internet) side. Then Google “what is my ip v4 address”, both should return the same result. If not you probably have CGNAT.
Great news. Been a while since we heard from CF, was fearing that they would be winding down expansion. Gives me hope they’ll serve my property before years end. The jump from ADSL to FTTP will be huge for me
Lets hope they can get people to sign up
They have more trustpilot reviews than any altnet. With all the altnets you multiply the number by 5 to get the lower range or by 8 to get the higher range, which means CF has between 165k to 264k customers, probably around the 20% takeup which is good considering they have a lot of overbuild with virgin, bt and hyperoptic
Plenty of people round my part of London have signed up. Can see the black CSPs on the outside of houses or the thin cable going directly into houses – and cables coming out of the fibre nodes mounted on the poles. Lots of CFL branded vans or blank ones with contractors in CFL gear running about.