CityFibre UK Finish Primary £50m Wolverhampton FTTP Broadband Rollout
Network operator CityFibre, which has so far built their 5.5Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 4.5 million UK premises, has today confirmed the completion of their “primary” £50 million build across the West Midland’s city of Wolverhampton.
CityFibre originally started this deployment during July 2020 (here) and they’ve since made their network “ready for service” (RFS) at over 100,000 premises (up from 90k in April 2024), which reflects more than 90% of Wolverhampton’s homes and most businesses.
The FTTP deployment is on top of their existing Dark Fibre build in Wolverhampton, which initially connected approximately 170 public sector sites to its full fibre network, including schools, libraries, leisure centres and council offices. CityFibre has since completed a further 119 connections including the City of Wolverhampton Council offices, educational buildings and Wolverhampton Homes apartment blocks.
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While the primary-build is now complete, the operator said they would continue to explore opportunities to connect more homes and businesses, including flats, new-build homes, business parks and homes on private roads.
Charlie Kitchin, Partnership Manager at CityFibre, said:
“We’re delighted to announce the completion of the latest primary-build of our full-fibre network in Wolverhampton. This rollout marks an exciting step for the city’s connectivity, which will now benefit from faster and more reliable broadband. The upgrading of this digital infrastructure will bring significant productivity and innovation benefits for the local economy.”
When considering all networks in the area, gigabit broadband coverage in the city has increased from just 2% in 2020 to 96% in 2024. CityFibre’s main gigabit-capable competitors in the city are Openreach and Virgin Media (VMO2), although some smaller networks like Grain and Hyperoptic have also deployed their full fibre infrastructure into a few specific areas.
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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Or put another way “CF opens up Wolverhampton for integration availability with new Sky Customers and those re-contracting” ……
To late to the party, Openreach are already present with the best digital fixed and mobile networks
If a BT fan is going to claim the best, then define “best” then…..
symmetric=no, XGS-PON or better=No, No in-contract price increases=No
Sky couldn’t care less about O.R., they have sizeable numbers and get a better deal from CF.
Mobile is something not even connected with this story and EE, in my opinion, are the best. I’m not saying everyone will think that, as mobile operators vary in terms of service from cell to cell.
Cope harder Tyler
FANNDY ADAMS, laughable rubbish from you as usual
SKY wouldn’t be anywhere if it wasn’t for BT Group.
I would love BT to close wholesale and run on their own again.. the amount of crap they have to put up with, from Ofcom
Considering most of the ‘BT’ infrastructure is at least partially public funded shutting down wholesale wouldn’t go so well for them.
Truth is they’re all just businesses that look after their shareholders first.
CityFibre are building a more modern network, which is objectively superior at the point is arrives into the customers property.
If I was in Wolverhampton and Sky said they’d give me a better speed with symmetrical upload for the same price, I’d jump at it.. Who wouldn’t?
@Tyler, I don’t get over emotional with insults. I simply asked you to quantify as to what you thought was “the best” from your own statement and you failed, resorting to your obtuse reply. I helped you by clarifying what competition had over what you thought was the “best” – you still couldn’t undertake the reply required.
Sky were actually everywhere BEFORE broadband even came along. So you might want to think about your own posting before casting your opinion on others. They would still be successful even if Broadband was with another ISP and not Sky branded, and no, I am not a Sky supporter. Old Rupie didn’t see any value of buying BT though; whether shareholder takeover or just majority shareholder.
BT operate in the UK, that means, along with many other television and telecom operators, being governed by OfCom; whether liking it or not, and separate to what anyone thinks of Ofcom in general.
In the future, when CF and Altnets *may* combine, BT might be the lesser partner in Sky’s broadband offering. As you want to close wholesale as you stated, that may please you.
@ Andrew: BT is a business operation. It does not have a publicly funded network in its broadband service provision except where the network has been built under BDU contracts. Many network providers have built broadband network infrastructure under such contracts.
As soon Netomnia or Cityfibre will on my street, same speed will leave OR network.
Virgin is automatically off the table. I need stable broadband.
If that dinosaur offered symmetric speeds, different thing.
What a point from 1600 Mb/s speeds if upload is ONLY 120 Mb/s ?
At that cost of “Premises RTS”, CityFibre would have, based on a crude calculation, needed about GBP 1.7 bn to achieve its original targets.