CityFibre’s Luton FTTP Broadband Build Covers 35,000 Premises
Fibre optic network builder CityFibre has issued a brief progress update on their efforts to deploy a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in the Bedfordshire (England) town of Luton, which began two years ago (here) and has now covered a total of 35,000 premises.
The operator now claims to have “completed most of its rollout in the eastern area of Luton“, although it’s unclear how long it will take them to finish the city-wide deployment (there doesn’t currently seem to be much activity in the city from CF), and they face several gigabit-capable competitors in the shape of Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) and Openreach. Not to mention smaller deployments by the likes of Grain, Glide, Hyperoptic and OFNL.
The work 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), although it’s unclear precisely when they will achieve this target (the original goal was for the end of 2025, but their current build + M&A plan may only get them to c.6m). The operator currently covers 3.6 million UK premises (3.3m RFS).
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Neil Madle, CityFibre’s Partnership Manager for Luton, said:
“We’re delighted to offer the people of Luton all the benefits of full fibre connectivity, with over 35,000 premises now Ready for Service. CityFibre’s investment in the town will allow more residents to unlock seamless homeworking, streaming and gaming. We would also like to thank residents for their patience as we have rolled out this essential digital infrastructure, which is set to benefit the local community for years to come.”
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.
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OFNL is doing only new build estates that are locked for competitors for 2-3 years.
Only 2-3 years? When I contacted them, they said they just didn’t open their network at all
Wish they would carry on up my road, seems to have stopped 3 roundabouts away middle of last year and no further progress. BT have just gone RFS outside my door within a week as part of exchange modernization and I’ve been kept fully informed of what they are doing and why. Yet city fire seems to have lost a lot of info on their website, it’s looking like a promo for the company but no actual info on progress , even the map of planned areas has gone. Not really looking to move from an asymmetric connection to another asymmetrical provider so waiting patiently (well as patiently as I can )
Hi, I’m responsible for the build in Luton. If you want to message me on Linkedin or email I can give you an idea of when it will be available.
CityFibre are currently doing some work along the Dallow/ Kingways Area. Also along cromwell rd in next 4 weeks. They finished outside Pcworld about a month ago. The progress is very slow. Worse is that information from Cityfibre is do poor. Last i heard 4 months ago ‘Were building in your Area’.
Openreach finished our area months ago.
Can’t see how they’ve done that many properties, all they’ve seem to have done is a few roads around the town centre and that’s it.
There’s no way they’ve done what they say they’ve done.
Nothing to celebrate at all, now if they announced 80% upwards of the town was able to get FTTP than sure.
CityFibre have been building for over 18 months. We started in Stopsley, working towards the town centre.
@ Paul Willson
Thank you for the offer of allowing me to message you, would you care to share your email address?
I’m not really a linkedin user and am unable to locate an email address for you.
I’m up at the top end of Barton road, I’ve seen the install team in the Bramingham area which is the other side of the street/road, that was a few months ago.
Seem’s like us Lutonian’s are champing at the bit for some sensible FTTP, any chance you can put a progress chart back on the website? promise we won’t complain if you’re not provisioning fast enough.
paul dot willson at cityfibre dot com
Out of all places why Luton? Seriously.
Why not???
After 2 years in and around the LU2 area they moved to LU3. I got the email saying where building FTP in your area be ready blah blah. They reached half way down the road and stopped building then vanished.
So in the start of 2024 openreach finshed installing FTP here. Now im stuck with EE or BT.
(RIP cityfibre)
As for CF covering 35000+ premises in Luton thats kinda hard to believe.
They had “building” for my road to now nada, back to as if nothing planned, one street shows around me building
Just hope they don’t do a VM and skip my road 🙁