Cityfibre UK Completes Full Fibre Broadband Rollout in Slough
Network operator CityFibre has announced that they’ve completed their project to deploy a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across the Berkshire (England) town of Slough. The new network is now ‘Ready for Service’ across almost 42,000 homes, or about 80% of local premises.
The build – supported by civil engineering firm VolkerSmart Technologies – was officially announced back in October 2020. At the time the operator projected that the roll-out would cost them £24 million, although today’s announcement shies away from saying how much investment they actually ended up putting into the area.
Since then, CityFibre has laid almost 500km of dense full fibre infrastructure across the town, more than two and a half times the length of the M25. While the primary-build is now completed, CityFibre said they would “continue to explore opportunities to reach further areas including new build properties, those on private or unadopted roads and business parks.”
Advertisement
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.
Neil Madle, Partnership Manager at CityFibre, said:
“We’re thrilled that our primary-build in Slough is now complete, making the town one of the best-connected places in the UK. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Slough now have access to lightning-fast and highly reliable connectivity, unlocking heaps of economic opportunities for the town. We look forward to watching Slough reap these benefits.”
Back in 2020 it was already the case that local premises were largely being covered by Virgin Media’s gigabit-capable broadband network, while Openreach were separately working to deploy FTTP across the town and Hyperoptic were present in a few MDUs (apartment blocks). Today CityFibre, Virgin Media and Openreach all have a similar level of gigabit coverage.
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.
« MS3 Error Sees Broadband Poles Installed in Historic Monument Area
Fibrus Grow FTTP Broadband Cover in Cumbria to 36K Premises »
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (6032)
- BT (3641)
- Politics (2721)
- Business (2441)
- Openreach (2406)
- Building Digital UK (2330)
- Mobile Broadband (2149)
- FTTC (2083)
- Statistics (1903)
- 4G (1819)
- Virgin Media (1766)
- Ofcom Regulation (1583)
- Fibre Optic (1469)
- Wireless Internet (1462)
- 5G (1408)
Question – Do Cityfibre only bring premises live when a town is complete, or do they do it by area after a particular amount is finished?
area by area
As Rich says, although each area within the location can often be quite sizeable.
Come Fibre BOMs and fall on Slough!
You’re ready-for-service now
A Fibre glass AltNet cash-cow.
Mourn Openreach!
Mess up the mess they call a town-
A gig for 37 down,
And more a month to stream The Crown.
For Twenty years.
But cheer that man with yankee grin
Who kicked BT and beat Virgin
Who invested everything, all in
For 1 quid shares:
But spare the bald young engineers who add,
The fibre to the streetstide cab;
It’s not their fault that they are bad,
They mean well.
It’s not their fault they do not know
The plans are wrong where they Kango,
Pack up their tools, for next they go
To Maidenhead
Stream HD sport and racing cars
In fibre-optic business parks
Just don’t look down and see the scars
From VolkerSmart.
Come, fibre BOMs and fall on Slough
You’re Ready-for-Service now
The marketers are coming now;
The earth exhales.
Thanks chatGPT.
Thats bang on, great observation, its not just about digging holes. When they wanted to come down our street they wanted to put poles up where there aren’t any existing. They didn’t want to dig because of the state of the footpaths and the fact that they may be liable for full width reinstatement. A suggestion was made that they partner with South Bucks and share the costs of the reinstatement of the footpaths/ roads which to be fair were fairly bad anyway. Guess what ? They didn’t build and South Bucks didn’t flinch so it’s all about costs and not the experience of of bringing high speed broadband to the great unwashed. Its about cost per premise passed and they will happily dismiss communities if something tops them over the cost they want to target
@NRSWA NED
Well yes they are a private business. It would be bad business to dig deliberately over budget. It sucks if you live in the area but that is the nature of business
A very funny take on John Benjamin’s classic
Bravo!
Completing a build is one thing.
Achieving decent take-up to make it profitable is another.
Cityfibre are struggling to achieve decent take-up and they won’t find it any easier after recently making most of their marketing team redundant.
Good luck guys, make the most of that gravy train before it finally draws to a halt.
Cityfibre are strugging on Take-up, yet refused a connection to my house, at least Vodafone blamed Cityfibre for not being able to give me a connection
@DF sounds like you did a great job if numbers are as low as you claim. So long, and thanks for all the fish
Do you uptake figures by chance?
That’s not fair . . home of the “Friendly Bomb” should get FTTP before moi.