CityFibre’s Project Gigabit Broadband Network in Suffolk UK Goes Live

CityFibre has today announced that the first customers have gone live on their new full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network in Suffolk (England), which is being built as part of their £100m state aid supported Project Gigabit contract (Lot 2) – this aims to reach more than 79,500 extra homes and businesses across hard-to-reach rural areas of the county.

The operator, which is supported by ISPs like Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen Internet and many more (Sky Broadband to follow in 2025), already covers around 4 million UK premises with full fibre broadband – mostly in urban areas – and their ambition is to cover up to 8m (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK.

Over the past couple of years CityFibre has also secured nine Project Gigabit contracts, totalling over £782m in government subsidies to serve more than 464,000 hard to reach rural premises in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Kent, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes. The operator has also committed their own funding to help build commercially beyond this (total of £1.2bn in combined public and private investment).

The Project Gigabit contract for Suffolk was officially awarded to CityFibre back in mid-2023 (here) and they’ve just confirmed that, after conducting months of engineering surveys and work, the first customers have now started to go live – starting with the town of Woodbridge. Other locations, including hamlets, villages and towns such as Icklingham, Mellis and Ringshall, will soon follow.

Simon Holden, Group Chief Operations Officer at CityFibre, said:

“Bringing our network to hard-to-reach areas in Suffolk will bring a new era of connectivity to people across the region. CityFibre’s ultrafast and ultra-reliable full fibre network will help residents and businesses make the most of being online and it’s exciting to see how full fibre will supercharge Suffolk for years to come.”

Sir Chris Bryant MP, Minister of State at DSIT, said:

“For many families and businesses in Suffolk, the ‘circle of doom’ will be a thing of the past thanks to this government-backed programme bringing lightning-fast internet to rural areas.

No one should be held back in their professional or personal lives because of lack of reliable digital connectivity, and it is fantastic to see the first customers in Suffolk reaping the benefits of Project Gigabit.”

The Project Gigabit contract for Suffolk anticipates that CityFibre’s roll-out will reach completion by December 2028 and the operator has also invested £74m of their own private funding in order to conduct complementary commercial builds alongside this roll-out.

Project Gigabit ultimately aims to help extend 1Gbps capable (download) broadband networks to reach “nationwide” UK coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here) – the country recently passed the 85% coverage mark and seems to be making good progress.