CityFibre’s FTTP Broadband Network Covers 3.37 Million UK Premises

Network operator CityFibre has informed ISPreview that their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network has just passed 3.37 million UK premises (3m of which are ‘Ready for Service’ by an ISP), which is up from 3 million (2.6m RFS) at the end of August 2023.

The latest figures suggest that the operator has been adding around 100,000 premises per month to their coverage since the end of August 2023, which is an improvement after they dropped to c.80k in the prior period. All of this supports their 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). 

In addition, the operator was also kind enough to furnish us with a progress update on their rollout of 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology, which began in the Spring of 2023 (here). CityFibre told ISPreview that the rollout is on track with 122 of their 131 fibre exchanges (FEX) now upgraded, over 90%.

UK ISP Yayzi Broadband has already launched a 2Gbps+ product using the newly upgraded network, while Vodafone and others are due to follow in early 2023.

A spokesperson for CityFibre told ISPreview:

“The 10Gbps-capable platform will support a new generation of affordable, multi-gigabit broadband services for millions of UK homes and businesses.

This XGS-PON upgrade enables us to offer our ISP partners access to the UK’s fastest wholesale broadband services. These are currently available to approximately 15% of the over 3m premises that are Ready For Service on our network today.

We are expecting several ISP partners to launch 2.5Gbps symmetrical services early next year and are planning to have completed our full XGS-PON network upgrade by early 2026.”

However, over the past few months CityFibre have also put a good number of their build locations on pause (example), which occurred after they took the decision to exit a number of their contracts with different build partners (Kier, Lanes-i etc.) due to a variety of reasons (current market strains and rising costs are a factor). Separately, the odd other contractor also ran into difficulties, such as with Makehappen (here) and Telec (here).

Sadly, re-appointing new contractors to those locations can be a lengthy process, which may take up to around a year. The result is that while CityFibre’s pace of build seems to have improved, this could change next year when the long-tail impacts of recent build pauses start to hit – time will tell. But even if the current pace of build were maintained, it would still only get them to c.5.4 million premises by the end of 2025, which is incredible for an alternative network, albeit well short of their ambition.