CityFibre Start FTTP Broadband Build for East Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire
CityFibre has begun the build phase of their £58m state-aid supported Project Gigabit broadband rollout contract for Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire & East Berkshire (LOT 26) in England (here), which will see them expand their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 34,000 of the hardest-to-reach premises (150,000 if you include their complementary commercial build).
The government’s Project Gigabit programme, which is overseen by the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, aims to help extend 1Gbps (download) capable networks from 85% coverage today to “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here). Commercial investment has already delivered more than 80% of this, which leaves the government’s scheme to focus on tackling the final 10-20% (mostly rural and some sub-urban areas), where the private sector alone often fails.
CityFibre’s engineers have initially begun their construction work for Lot 26 in rural parts of East Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, with works in Hertfordshire set to follow sometime in 2025, although the operator hasn’t said precisely where the build is initially taking place within those counties.
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The work will also support CityFibre’s aspiration toward covering up to 8 million UK premises with their new 2.2Gbps speed network (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK. So far, they’ve covered around 3.8m premises and have connected 400,000 customers (8th May 2024).
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said:
“We’re thrilled to be bringing world class digital infrastructure to East Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, helping to ensure no one is left behind. With build now underway, we look forward to helping communities free themselves from the copper networks of the past and experience next generation full fibre services that are revolutionising how people work, relax and communicate.”
CityFibre is currently contracted to build its 10Gbps capable FTTP network to a total of almost 465,000 hard-to-reach homes through the Project Gigabit programme over the next few years. This represents a total of over £782m in government subsidies for the operator and is said to unlock almost £1.2bn in combined public and private investment in rural broadband (pushing the total build to 1.366 million extra premises).
CityFibre’s Project Gigabit Contracts
| Lot no. | Location | Subsidised Premises | Public Subsidy |
| 5 | Cambridgeshire | 45,000 | £69m |
| 2 | Suffolk | 80,000 | £100m |
| 7 | Norfolk | 62,000 | £114m |
| 27 | Hampshire | 76,000 | £104m |
| 26 | Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire & East Berkshire | 34,000 | £58m |
| 11 | Leicestershire & Warwickshire | 38,000 | £71m |
| 16 & 1 | West & East Sussex | 52,000 | £100m |
| 29 | Kent | 50,000 | £112m |
| 12 | Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes | 25,000 | £51m |
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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Cityfibre were awarded the Kent contract in January 2024. I have been monitoring roadworks, and currently, Cityfibre are only working on 2 roads in the whole of Kent, and I suspect that this is part of their commercial roll out rather than Project Gigabit. Do they have enough resources to deliver all of these contracts? So far there have been no updates since January.
I wonder the same for Hampshire
The Hampshire BDUK contract was awarded in July 2023 – and early works are only just starting now – so Kent may be some way behind. They do have a lot of commitments – I guess this will all be fulfilled over many years.
Apparently CityFibre have restarted construction in Gloucester, having paused a year ago. There are a few signs of life on BIDB, and I’ve been seeing lots of their vans around recently, but there are no official announcements. I’m still waiting to see whether CF or OR will reach me first, but I doubt it’ll be soon…
Kent was awarded 6 ish months after Suffolk and they only really started in Suffolk in August – so based on that I’d expect you’ll not see much action until next year.
CityFibre are doing the same in Suffolk, huge numbers of roads had roadworks on since August. I don’t think they’ve connected anyone yet (they did a press release for the first customers in Norfolk), but a they have had roadworks throughout countless villages over the last few months.
Hope Cityfibre manage to complete all these Project Gigabit contracts before the tax payer’s money is spent on the bloated salaries of Mr Mesch and his buddies.
Given they don’t get the money until they deliver the premises I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Which also means they can cherry-pick the easiest properties, and quietly drop the difficult ones.
EXCF & NEFF555… Tell everyone you have no idea how BDUK builds and contracts work with out telling people you have no idea how BDUk builds and contracts works jesssus… stay out telecoms please!
@Witcher – The money has to come from somewhere, if it’s not initially from the government then it must be added to the debt pile.
At the end of the day it’s all one big pot of debt.
I was responding to a post specifically about taxpayers’ money going to CityFibre management, Jim.
CF announced our local build in March 2022, to start in early 2024. We’ve been monitoring build activity on BIDB – they haven’t touched this area. At all. The announced builds are geographically right next door and have been awarded after our builds were meant to start, which makes us think we’ve been silently dropped. It’s noticeable that Berks, Herts and Bucks have a much higher average income, so it’s not hard to guess where the issue might lie.
Funnily enough Toob recently ran an ad campaign, saying they’d be available in all of „Luton, Dunstable and Houghton Regis“ through CityFibre soon, when in reality CF haven’t even touched the north-west of Luton, with Dunstable and Houghton Regis completely untouched.
Meanwhile, OpenReach have announced they hope to get us on fibre by 2026, and they’re actively building fibre infrastructure a few streets away. At this point they’re probably faster than CityFail.