CityFibre Make UK Broadband Engineers Available on Saturdays
Good news. Customers taking a residential or business broadband package from an ISP on CityFibre’s growing national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network will now also be able to benefit from Saturday appointments for service repairs too, which will be handled just like the usual Monday to Friday (workday) slots.
A CityFibre spokesperson told ISPreview this morning: “Our engineers are now available for appointments on a Saturday, meaning customers have greater choice and flexibility about when they book.” Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this change.
CityFibre currently aspires to cover up to 8 million UK premises with their new FTTP network (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK subsidy) – across over 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK). But it remains unclear precisely when this will be achieved. The original goal was for the end of 2025, although their current build + M&A plan may get them up to c.6m (if it all goes well).
Advertisement
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.
« CityFibre’s Eastbourne FTTP Broadband Build Tops 30,000 Premises
Bet the engineers were pleased about working weekends
Of course they will be if it’s at ‘time and a half’ overtime rate.
I doubt they could be forced to work Saturdays if they didn’t want to and it wasn’t in their contract to do so.
They’ll probably get paid more for the weekend shift
Openreach have had engineers working weekends for years.
That’s not how it will work mate, they’ll just make them work Saturdays as a normal shift and take a rest day during the week.
Good for the customer but rubbish for the techs as there’ll be no benefits to giving up your Saturdays. It would be great if these companies make it worthwhile for the workers.
When I was working in remote exchanges (for BT) when BT went from 5 day, Mon-Fri, working to 7 day Mon-Sun, working many of the field tech’s made a similar statement. BT primary week remained Mon-Fri but each tech was required to work 10 Saturdays and 5 Sundays per year.
Usual complaint was how can I go shopping with the wife or family on Saturdays, or go to Rugby/football match etc, etc.
6 months later the great majority of the complainers wouldn’t go back to 5 day Mon-Fri every week working. They found when they had a day off during the week they got much much more done as there just wasn’t so many people in towns causing them delays or blocking them.
Don’t knock it until you try it.
At the time I was working a 9-day fortnight with every 2nd Friday off. Absolutely brill to have the longer weekends.
CityFibre and on picture Openreach engineer…
That’s a Cityfibre engineer at a Cityfibre wallbox, what are you on about?
Nope, that’s a Cityfibre Engineer
Well that is a Cityfibre splicing box he is opening so not sure why you would think that’s an Openreach employee
That is city fibre engineer in picture can also lan yard is city fibre colours
That is a City Fibre image. They use a brown external termination point that is curved at the top. Plus you can just about see the City Fibre lanyard that the person is wearing.
Looks like they’re working on CF equipment and the image is on CF’s website.
It’s a Cityfibre engineer.
Old style green shirt underneath the hi Vis and working on a Cityfibre ont
Get to Specsavers
When I worked on the residential side of VM, Saturday was a working day. 2 out of 3 Saturdays, for a day off in the week. I did hear a while back they were changing Saturday working hours from 8-4 to 8-6 as well!
“to benefit from Saturday appointments for service repairs…”
Repairs required already!? This is a new network, doesn’t sound very reliable, doesn’t bode well for the future.
Every single network will have problems and need repairs – both new and old alike, many of which may not be the fault of the network itself. This is very normal, particularly for major national scale providers like CityFibre.
Repairs can be required for a number of reasons, accidental damage to the fibers, equipment failing and outright vandalism
Kelly’s carry out the installations so if it’s installations on a Saturday it’s likely just them doing it. City fibre engineers don’t work the weekend unless they want to. If no ones working that weekend and an issue happens with the install then the install has a higher chance of failing.