CityFibre Builds Full Fibre Broadband to 3 Million UK Premises
Network operator CityFibre has today announced that their 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network now covers 3 million UK premises (up from 2.5m in January 2023) and 2.6 million of those are considered to be ‘Ready For Service’ (up from 2.2m), which means that residents can place an order with one of around 35-40 ISPs.
The build forms part of the operator’s original ambition to cover up to 8 million 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). Once completed, this is also expected to include coverage for over 800k businesses, 400k public sector sites and 250k 5G access points. The work is supported by various UK ISPs, such as Vodafone, TalkTalk, Giganet and Zen Internet etc.
CityFibre began the construction of its access network in 2018, commencing mobilisation in its first 12 towns and cities and has since achieved primary build complete status in multiple locations including Milton Keynes, Stirling, Peterborough and Coventry. In its most mature locations, such as Milton Keynes, ISP partners are now approaching 30% take-up, with other locations growing on a similar trajectory.
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The operator is also in the process of upgrading their entire GPON based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to XGS-PON, which can handle broadband speeds of up to 10Gbps (Gigabits per second). As part of that, they recently launched a new 2.5Gbps tier for consumers (here), which some providers are already offering as a trial product.
By the end of 2023, CityFibre expects to have deployed its XGS-PON equipment into over 90% of its fibre exchanges with the new 2.5Gbps product becoming available to around 20% of its ready for service footprint, currently.
Sir John Whittingdale, Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure, said:
“Millions of homes and businesses from Milton Keynes to Stirling now have access to ultra-fast, reliable broadband and 5G thanks to CityFibre’s delivery of the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit.
Having access to fast broadband is a crucial part of our plan to boost economic growth and level up communities, with more than 76% of properties in the UK now able to connect to gigabit-capable broadband.
We are confidently moving towards achieving our goal of 85% coverage throughout the UK by 2025 and universal coverage by 2030 and it’s the efforts of providers like CityFibre that will help us get there.”
Just to be clear, Project Gigabit is focused upon rural areas and the final 20% of hardest to reach premises, and thus the Government are perhaps being a bit misleading above by conflating progress under that programme with Cityfibre’s entirely separate commercial builds in Milton Keynes to Stirling. Likewise, while their Dark Fibre may be helping to support some 5G networks, they aren’t themselves building 5G mobile.
For context. Cityfibre only recently secured four Project Gigabit contract awards (here and here), totalling £387m in government subsidies to reach 262,000 homes in different parts of the UK (e.g. Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Hampshire). This has been supported by nearly £223m of committed private investment, representing a combined total investment in Project Gigabit’s target areas of £610m. Within its existing home build programme, CityFibre will also complement its Project Gigabit rollouts in the four counties with expansion to an additional 453,000 premises. But the build phase for this is only now getting started.
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Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said:
“We have made phenomenal progress this year, matching our performance from last year, and we on track to deliver another million ready for service homes to customers this year.
With an infrastructure project of this size, we have successfully adapted as the market has changed and will continue to fine-tune our rollout in order to meet our targets moving forward. I’m delighted that thanks to our investment, 3m homes now have access to world class digital infrastructure and we look forward to connecting many more as our rollout progresses.”
However, it’s worth noting that the current pace of build is not progressing fast enough to achieve their original target of having 8 million premises “substantially completed” by the end of 2025 (a vague term that allows some flexibility on targets), which perhaps helps to explain why today’s press release makes no mention of the 2025 date. At the current pace, something around 4-5 million premises seems more likely.
CityFibre is naturally under many of the same pressures as almost everybody else in this market, such as rising build costs, competition (aggressive pricing and overbuild by rivals etc.) and need to generate a viable level of take-up in order to satisfy investors. This is partly why the start of 2023 has already seen several hundred job losses (here), but they’re still rolling out and claim to be confident in their plan.
Nevertheless, the operator has previously signalled that they’re also looking to grow their coverage through further acquisitions or partnerships, which is despite potentially becoming a consolidation target themselves – VMO2 / nexfibre are alleged to have shown some interest, but we’ve seen little concrete movement on that.
The operator’s latest annual accounts revealed that they ended 2022 in somewhat of a mixed position, with good network growth (2.2m RFS homes in 2022 vs 1.2m in 2021) and sharply rising take-up (174.4k consumer connections vs 60.9k). But operating losses also more than doubled to £114.8m (2021: £42.3m) and the cost of servicing the company’s debts went in a similar direction (mainly due to them holding a much larger debt pile after last year’s £4.9bn debt raise).
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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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@Cityfibre – Tell us how many premises are signed up to your network, that would be far more interesting.
They (CF) dug up the roads, and put some conduits down 2 years ago around here.
Since then it’s been radio silence. Interestingly another alt net has done the same in the last month but will be live in 1 more month apparently. Very different roll out strategy.
Are CF talking about where they dug up streets, it where an order can be placed?
i wonder what percentage of UK still doesn’t have fibre.
No full fibre option is 44.6% as of 29/08/2023 will be a little smaller by the end of the day
If you take the latest figures, and include Virgin’s 1gig coverage, the UK currently has ~78% “Gigabit availability”
Yes yes FTTP is better, but Gigabit over Virgin is still technically an equivalent service for 99% of people
I wonder how much that gets pushed up by FTTPoD?
Almost zero.
Think Broadband don’t count it in their stats. The only influence it’ll have, and it’s tiny, is where someone has had it installed and other folks are able to connect to the infrastructure.
I can order it however they have done a aerial SN build here which is pointless to me as it’s to the rear of the property (mid terrace)
If you can order it, then it means they have planned a way to get connectivity to your property.
Order it and let them connect you up.
Possibly, but bear in mind most operators set a fixed connection budget, and if an individual property is above that then they won’t connect it. Even if you can place an order, that doesn’t create a legal obligation on the supplier to connect you. If they accept an order and give a connection date then you can claim modest compensation under Ofcom rules, from the offered connection date up to the point 30 days after they formally advise in writing that they won’t be connecting the property and won’t be paying further compensation.
But in law, advertising general availability is not misleading if there’s circumstances meaning they can’t connect everybody, nor part of any contract to connect. Taking an order forms a contract, but the Ofcom compensation would be all you’d reasonably get if they couldn’t honour it.
But if they’re offering, what have you got to lose by trying to order?
In Gloucester they are having difficulty with two things. Firstly there is a canal which they didn’t foresee would need to be crossed to provide cable to one half of the city. They are considering using ducts underneath a bridge. Secondly work has paused because they are no longer working with Kier and need to find a new lead contractor.
Interesting – aren’t all those Gloucester bridges swing/lift bridges, which might make that challenging?! I really hope they make progress soon, as huge swathes of the city still have zero fibre options, and things seem really glacial.
18 months after laying the cables on my street in February 2022, they’re still not active
Openreach did their FTTP deployment to my street in December 2021 and it was active 2 months later – I signed up straight away for 18 months with Sky and I have just renewed for another 18 months
City Fibre checker still says “WE’RE STILL BUILDING OUR FULL FIBRE NETWORK IN YOUR AREA ….. We’ve encountered challenges that delay us from connecting your property. Register your interest and we’ll be in touch when we’ve identified the best way to connect your home”
Seems to be a common theme. Openreach seem to have been pretty efficient at deploying their network and getting it operational, then the altnets story seems to be one of half-finished streetworks that seem to be left for months on end. It seems inexplicable as presumably they are paying for this work and not getting any return on their investment.
Lots of Alt nets announce rollouts some of which never commence and other simply start the work and abandon it
They have dug all our streets up and installed all the ducts in Leicestershire, but then nothing else has happened for ages.!
I feel you.
Telewest cabled our street in 1998. Never ran the cables down it and so it’s never been RFS
Took 7 months to the day after my cables were laid before I could order it.
Took from around June 2022 to just a week ago for cityfibre to go live on my street. It’s getting installed on sept 8th now
@Craig
I’m in Leics too. Took 9 weeks for them to go live in my area.
I rang them virtually every day until I was given a go-live date.
Their Edinburgh build appears to have ground to a halt. There supposed to complete the build in 2024, which isn’t impossible, but they still have a fair amount to cover based on the current ThinkBroadband coverage map
CityFibre always do these ‘we’re so great, we’re building so fast’ press releases. But the fact they won’t let its customers change ISP or even change speeds on their service without going through a full line termination and brand new customer installation means they are still a two bit company and not in the same league as Openreach.
Always makes me laugh when I see Cityfibre sponsoring the flashy award ceremonies, costing thousands, then guess what? They win some big awards!
Openreach never get a mention at the awards…Hmmmm.
What a farce.
OK openreach fan boy.
Vodafone through OR accidently put a cease on my line and it took 2 weeks before they could fix it due to them needing an engineer visit even though ONT was on with router in place.
As for changing provider a full line termination is always required no matter if its OR or CF? Usually your new line provide is arranged a day after your existing ceases
“Usually your new line provide is arranged a day after your existing ceases”…You would think wouldn’t. Not with CityFibre. Hence my first post. With CityFibre you cannot even order till your line is fully terminated and then its as a brand new install. Hence you are out of service for 2-4 weeks guaranteed.
Damn that really does suck lol
‘As for changing provider a full line termination is always required no matter if its OR or CF?’
Migration between Openreach CPs from the Openreach point of view is seamless. They change your VLAN mapping and you’re connected to the new CP. You are disconnected from the old CP by the move to the new one.
No full cease at all.
Sounds like the gaining ISP is at fault here. Pretty sure (as with Openreach) they have a Working Line Takeover process. Gaining ISP raise order, on the date the losing ISP config is remapped to the new ISP and (assuming the new ISP has issued a router) they service goes live.
So question is WHO was your losing ISP and WHO is your gaining ISP?
Here in Leicester, I know a few people who have had it laid in the street and still can’t order it over 6 months on. My parents had it laid and can actually order it but don’t want it together with most of the other old people in the homes of the cul-de-sac. Openreach soon after also started to cable the same road for FTTP! I think I’m on only estate in Leicester that they aren’t going to cable and that’s directly behind the Glenfield hospital. Just over the road to the roads that have been cables. Virgin Media however, pulled fibre through existing underground pipes 18 months ago which I was semi excited about… until seeing the media converter to coax in the wall box :).
Yours will be within the 400k that isn’t ready for service. Civils are generally done over a year period then once all trunk routes are proved and PNs dropped off before they complete final cabling to your local street cab.
“Virgin Media however, pulled fibre through existing underground pipes 18 months ago which I was semi excited about… until seeing the media converter to coax in the wall box :).”
That’s because on the majority of FTTP installs, VM still use a coax connector to their hub through the property wall and push DOCSIS radio frequency over glass (RFoG) down the fibre. That is slloowwwllly changing with their XGS migration, but regardless, why worry about it? Notwithstanding my dislike of VM as a company, the technology works, and the RFoG setups are fast and much more reliable than the old HFC (coax from street cabinet to property) setup that most VM customers have.
If you’re lucky then a new install might involve a VM Hub 5x, in which case it will be fibre right into the hub itself. If it’s your only fast and modernish option, then take it, whether HFC, RFoG or true FTTP.
@Marko polo: Virgin Media installs their ONTs on the exterior of the wall*, Openreach installs on the interior. I don’t see the problem.
* Installations for XGS-PON don’t have the ONT on the wall.
I’m afraid I take everything Greg Mesch says with a pinch of salt, after he told us how well we were doing just to make 400 of us redundant days later.
I’m afraid sometimes it’s just a lot of sales talk.
Any update on Openreach deployment? The latest was from 2nd of May and they were supposed to provide an update every 3 months.
I believe around 11.5 million RFS currently
Looking at those numbers getting 8M by 2025 is not going to happen they are looking at about 4M so missing the target by a very wide margin
Disappointing for the investors who were told they’d be covering 8 million.
The target has always been end of 2025, not by 2025.
At a current run rate of 1 million per year that’s still a lot of ramping up to do.
Cityfibre can pass as many premises as they like, but while ever they’re part owned by the UAE government, I’ll never be signing up to any ISP that uses their network.
As a member of the LGBT community, I refuse to pay any money that would ultimately benefit a government that openly persecutes people based on their sexuality.
It’s a well known fact that the UAE routinely imprison people for simply been homosexual.
All power to you: folks should make purchasing decisions based on any criteria they wish and are able to within their budget, including moral grounds.
Damn, didn’t know CityFibre was partially owned by Muslims who believe in the teachings of the Qur’an and Hadith. It’s almost like they didn’t allow their religion to be watered down, unlike Christians
That’s not fair. All CityFibre wanted was that oil money!
Taking UAE investment doesn’t mean that CityFibre suddenly hates LGBTQ+ people.
That’s a really unfair suggestion to make with a clear political motivation behind it. And I say that as a fellow gay person.
We all know the altnet industry is highly competitive. They can’t afford to be picky with their funding. As they say, business is business…
@Raj. It’s not about politics or religion, it’s simply about human rights, moral standards and doing the right thing.
If CF has deployed the fibre months ago in your street but you still can’t place an order, email CF’s CEO Greg. I was waiting for months and getting non-sense replies from CF. After reaching out to their CEO, everything was sorted right away and I was able to place an order within 2 weeks.
Dug up and put fibre around my area in North Glasgow a few months ago but have heard nothing ever since, is this normal behaviour? Really keen to get fibre but despite registering my interest I have heard nothing. Think they would want to begin to recoup any investment as soon as possible.