Network operator CityFibre has today announced that they’ve begun the roll-out phase of their £112 million state-aid supported Project Gigabit contract for Kent (Lot 29) in England. This will extend their 10Gbps capable FTTP broadband ISP network to an additional 50,000+ premises in hard-to-reach rural areas.
The announcement means that CityFibre has now begun construction work in all 9 of their Project Gigabit contract areas (here). The projects reflect over £782m in government subsidies to serve more than 464,000 hard to reach rural premises across Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Kent, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes.
The network operator has also committed their own funding to help build commercially beyond those contracted areas (i.e. a total of £1.2bn in combined public and private investment and 1.366 million extra premises may be delivered as a result of these contracts). But sadly, today’s announcement doesn’t provide any details of where CityFibre are starting to build in Kent or how long it will take to complete the deployment.
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All of this will help to support CityFibre’s wider ambition to eventually cover up to 8 million premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and £782m of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK. So far, they’ve already managed to cover 4 million premises.
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said:
“Bringing full fibre connectivity to hard-to-reach homes and businesses across Kent will create new possibilities, empowering local communities to thrive. We are excited for residents to experience the benefits of enhanced connectivity, leaving behind the limitations of copper technology.”
Telecoms Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, said:
“Everyone deserves the chance to thrive in both their professional and personal lives, and lack of reliable connectivity should never be a barrier to that. Thanks to this government-funded programme, hard-to-reach parts of Kent are now being equipped with the fastest speeds on the market, allowing communities to stay connected.”
The operator is supported by various ISPs like Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen Internet and more (Sky Broadband will follow in 2025), although they aren’t all available in every single location yet.
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https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/uk-gigabit-programme-kent-public-review/uk-gigabit-programme-kent-request-for-information
This was LOT 29 detail that is now discussed in article. Doesn’t say Cityfibre specifically.
They’ve building again in Gloucester, according to BIDB (and I keep seeing their vans around) but don’t seem to have announced anything officially. They must be very busy just now. I’m hoping 2025 is finally our year: CF and OR are both digging in, literally, and the race is on to see who gets to us first…
What has happened to the work they were doing in Maidstone and other towns mentioned earlier? Are they abandoning that and concentrating on this.
They haven’t even gone live in some parts of medway they did work on over 2 years. Yet later builds have already gone live i have no clue how that makes any sense.
Where I am they built in 2023 and just abandoned it. So the work has been done in the street with the cabinet and toby boxes, it just isn’t connected up because other adjacent streets didn’t get finished.
Fast forward to today, and the status website says how my postcode and area is in the planning stage. It’s just a mess!
What happened to the work in Halifax they began and seems to have stopped, suddenly BRSK came out of know where and have already installed poles, cabling nearly ready and they started in late December
Wonder when phase 2 will be updated by cityfibre, they announced it years ago and it’s been radio silence from what I’ve seen ever since.
My area in the southwest still is left as phase 2 and barely registered anywhere. Openreach has beaten them to the punch now and finally built to my postcode but they are more expensive and don’t offer symmetrical speeds which is something I want.
I’ll have to go with openreach for now to finally get away from virgin but curious when they will announce updates
CityFibre seem to be one of those textbook comms companies that can’t handle the concept of communication. Totally hopeless and impossible to get through to.
Still no public information as to where they are contracted to build, right?
In Hampshire there’s some fuzzy blobs on a low Res map on the BDUK web site, but that’s it as far as I can tell…
I tried to find out but they won’t divulge any information. The best I got was ‘it’s all commercially sensitive’. Sure, while playing with £110 million worth of public funds.
All I know is – I won’t get it. Apparently my postcode is not part of the build plan. We are not rural or hard to reach. Which means we are s**t out of luck.
If only Cityfibre were as good at completing builds as they are at shouting about starting them.