CityFibre has announced that they’ve completed their £15 million project to deploy a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the seaside town of Lowestof in Suffolk (England), which originally began during the spring of 2020 and has now covered nearly 30,000 premises (RFS).
The original build plan was expanded slightly during the rollout to include the surrounding areas of Carlton Colville, Normanston and Gunton. While the primary-build is now completed, CityFibre said they will continue to explore opportunities to reach more sites including new build properties, multi-dwelling units, homes on private or unadopted roads and business parks.
The work supports CityFibre’s wider ambitions 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 already passed over 3 million homes (RFS), but they’ll need to build a lot faster or acquire a rival or two in order to stand any chance of reaching their current ambition in time.
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Neil Madle, Partnership Manager at CityFibre, said:
“I’m delighted that Lowestoft can benefit from better broadband now that the primary-build of our full fibre network has been completed. Equipped with fast and reliable full fibre infrastructure between the town’s streets, residents can now enjoy seamless streaming, even when using multiple devices at once, with ample productivity and innovation benefits for the local economy.”
Back in 2020 we noted that, in terms of CityFibre’s gigabit-capable rivals, cable operator Virgin Media had no presence in the town and Openreach’s FTTP network could generally only be found on the southern edge of the town, as well as a smaller deployment around some central areas. Since then nexfibre (Virgin Media) has begun to deploy across the whole town (they’re already live in around 15-25% of it) and Openreach is also significantly expanding their coverage. OFNL also has a small patch in the odd new build homes site.
I note that they didn’t give what it actually cost them this time.
£15m mentioned in the first paragraph, which is up from £14m in the original announcement.
What Cityfibre don’t tell you about is all the builds in other areas that have been suddenly abandoned and cancelled. Utter chaos.
Yep, including here in Gloucester and Worcester. No communication, no idea what’s going on, and huge swathes of the cities remain fibre deserts. Whilst my 70Mbps FTTC setup is OK for now, it’s been 5 years since any sort of upgrade was possible. I wonder how many more now?
@D – yes, we know you were made redundant from CF. Loose the hate, it’s time to move on now.
Still remember them starting to build in Maidstone after Trooli, Netomnia, BT and Virgin had already big build presence in the town. They spent a lot of money without a single home passed
Not sure if it means anything, but the area of Maidstone they were building in has work listed for January and Lanes-I vans are present.
Whether that means anything sizable is happening or not though is another matter! Core drill work and laying is listed.
I’m in Carlton Colville and I can’t order it, not sure what percentage they class as complete, they did some work around here, but never came back.
Nice, Cityfibre are motoring a long with their rollout.
Any news on Warrington or have they paused/stopped that?
It’s not finished as still can not get the fttp line they not tell the hole story.
They never said anything about covering everyone there, Richard.
I live in Great Yarmouth next four to Lowestoft they started building in December 2022
NOW it’s December 2023 and no news when it will ready to connect
Im, just off london rd on the whitton, they laid fibre all around us but not in our street, still get the junk mail saying its availible though.