CityFibre Bring FTTP to 100k Premises in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Network operator CityFibre UK has issued a progress update on their £65m project to deploy a 10Gbps capable full fibre broadband network across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) in Dorset (England), which has now reached 100,000 “homes” (although they confusingly interchange this with “residents” in the same PR).

The work, which began with an effort to upgrade and extend their legacy FTTH network in Bournemouth, began all the way back in 2019, while the more recent £30m build across Poole and Christchurch – originally supported by civil engineering firm CCN Communications – officially began in March 2021 (here).

The roll-out supports CityFibre’s wider ambition of covering 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 3.5 million premises (3.2m as Ready for Service) and they aim to add another million during 2024.

Adrian Smith, CityFibre’s Partnership Manager for BCP, said:

“It’s a pleasure to be able to provide the people of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole all the benefits full fibre connectivity has to offer. We would like to thank residents for their patience as we have rolled out this essential digital infrastructure. From here, we hope to see more people in the area unlock seamless homeworking, streaming and learning.”

Sadly, we don’t know when the local BCP build will reach completion, and it should be said that they face competition in the area from gigabit-capable rivals like Virgin Media and Openreach.