CityFibre Reduce UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout Due to Expanded Commercial Cover
One of the country’s largest alternative networks, CityFibre, has announced that they’ve reached an agreement with the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency to “re-scope” the contracts they hold under the Project Gigabit broadband roll-out programme due to the “accelerated rollout of commercially funded full fibre” across their contracted areas.
Just to recap. CityFibre’s full fibre (FTTP – XGS-PON) network currently covers over 4.7 million UK premises (4.5m Ready for Service) and they aspire to reach 8 million in the future. In addition, the operator also holds ten Project Gigabit contracts – originally representing over £920m of government funding for a subsidised build to 557,000 premises in “hard-to-reach” rural areas (1.36 million if we included their supporting commercial build).
However, the operator has today announced that their Project Gigabit contracts have all been “re-scoped in response to the accelerated rollout of commercially funded full fibre across Project Gigabit areas“, which in practice means that they’ll reach fewer premises (i.e. there’s now no need to build in locations where rivals have already built gigabit-capable broadband networks, as doing so would waste public funds).
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CityFibre now expects to connect a total of 450,000 rural and harder-to-reach premises by 2030, including 226,000 subsidised through Project Gigabit. The operator has so far completed 70,000 contracted premises, or 150,000 if we include their supportive commercial build in the same areas.
As part of this re‑scoping, CityFibre “will return” (i.e. abandon) a £58.6m Project Gigabit contract for Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10), originally taken on as part of its acquisition of Connexin’s full fibre infrastructure in 2025 (they originally promised to deliver this, but no progress has been made). The move is not surprising as we had recently noticed a bit of a slowdown in some of their roll-outs (here).
Simon Holden, CityFibre’s Chief Executive Officer, said:
“We are immensely proud of CityFibre’s involvement in Project Gigabit, an ambitious programme that has helped unlock the benefits of full fibre infrastructure for households and businesses previously at risk of being left behind. BDUK’s commitment has helped spur further investment and continued innovation and the time is right to focus on where we will have the biggest impact as we establish the competitive digital infrastructure market the UK deserves.”
Liz Lloyd, Telecoms Minister, said:
“Over the past 18 months, this government has delivered upgrades to more than 229,000 hard-to-reach premises across the country. Our reforms to the telecoms market have unlocked a surge in commercial broadband rollout, meaning many areas previously in scope for CityFibre’s Project Gigabit contracts will now be upgraded without cost to taxpayers.
“We welcome CityFibre’s progress to date and remain fully committed to supporting communities still struggling with slow broadband. That’s why we are already in discussions with other suppliers to ensure remaining premises receive upgrades as soon as possible, and these changes will not affect our target of reaching 99% gigabit coverage by 2032.”
The announcement states that “these changes will not affect BDUK’s ability to achieve the UK government target of 99% UK gigabit coverage by 2032,” although that may partly depend upon how successful and prompt BDUK are in finding a solution for the now uncertain Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10) contract.
Summary of Project Gigabit and CityFibre Changes
Hampshire
Revised to cover around 29,000 premises backed with £71.7 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £104.2 million contract to provide around 75,500 premises.
Suffolk
Revised to cover around 60,000 premises backed with up to £118.2 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £100.5 million contract to provide around 79,500 premises.
Cambridgeshire
Revised to cover around 35,000 premises backed with up to £77 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £69 million contract to provide up to 45,000 hard-to-reach premises.
Leicestershire and Warwickshire
Revised to cover around 36,000 premises backed with up to £76.4 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £71 million contract to provide around 38,000 hard-to-reach premises.
Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and East Berkshire
Revised to cover around 6,000 premises backed with £24.4 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £58 million contract to provide around 34,000 hard-to-reach premises.
Kent
Revised to cover around 9,000 premises backed with £26.1 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £112 million contract to provide around 50,000 hard-to-reach premises.
Norfolk
Revised to cover around 33,000 premises backed with £61.9 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £114.2 million contract to provide around 62,200 premises.
East and West Sussex
Revised to cover around 13,000 premises backed with £25.2 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £100 million contract to provide around 52,000 hard-to-reach premises.
Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes
Revised to cover around 6,000 premises backed with £19.8 million investment through Project Gigabit.
ORIGINAL: £51 million contract to provide around 25,000 hard-to-reach premises.
Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire
BDUK Statement: “Building Digital UK and CityFibre have mutually agreed to end the Project Gigabit contract for Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire. As a result of wider market conditions and a significant expansion in commercial rollout in the region, less public funding is required and the contract is no longer appropriate. We are in discussions with other suppliers to ensure the few remaining premises not covered by any rollout plans still get access to fast, reliable broadband as soon as possible.”
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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Will that money get reinvested into providing broadband to other areas, or does it just go back to the exchequer?
I think we can both guess the answer to that one.
This crops up every time we get one of these stories. Project Gigabit funds are *never* disbursed to broadband suppliers before the work is completed.
The problem has been getting another altnet to take on a Project Gigabit contract once it’s been re-/descoped.
So, for the contracts that will not be returned to BDUK, Cityfibre have negotiated to reduce the number of prems to be passed whilst simultaneously increasing the price-per-prem on all contracts.
Does anyone else smell BDUK’s desperation?
Perhaps they should just recall/cancel all of the contracts given to AltNets asap and give them all to Openreach.
Day by day, this seems to be the most likely outcome, that sooner or later Openreach will be given the contracts, or at least any missing prems and money from them.
Of course, this will likely be after all of the venture capital money that foolish investors have given to AltNets has been used up on the fool’s errand of trying to bring in all of the BDUK contract money.
The former BT CEO wasn’t wrong, was he?
I was originally covered in Lot 11 (Leicestershire & Warwickshire) and both the City Fibre website and BDUK checker showed I was planned by City Fibre as part of Lot 11.
But I’ve just checked again after seeing this news article and both state I am no longer included in the plans despite having no plans from any other provider.
I don’t understand how we have been de-scoped with no plans or gigabit availability.
Have you checked if Openreach have any plans for your area?
Openreach still showing no plans for my property and a few others I’ve checked in the area.
Gigaclear were planned 2 years ago but cancelled. They’ve just confirmed no plans still.
Hmm it may be that some other provider that you are not aware of has included your property in their rollout plans. It may never happen or be years away but that may be enough for the exclusion. The lack of transparency is really frustrating, especially given public money is involved.
Do you get Virgin where you live?
No Virgin here.
We are a rural village quite some way from anywhere else or the next village even.
I’ve sent BDUK an email to clarify. If they state somebody has now included us in a build then thats great. Ill see what they come back with.
I’ve found that going through your MP can add a bit of weight to the request. Good luck!
The cost per prem has increased as the initial contracts had large volumes of relatively inexpensive properties wrongly classified as requiring subsidy. This wasn’t just due to other providers coming along and building after the contracts were agreed. There was large volume of existing builds, new build housing estates etc. So fewer premises to divide the cost by and the more expensive ones remain.
No mention of Hampshire lot being reduced?
Added now. Missed it off the first pass due to the shotgun blast of emails from BDUK.
@Mark Jackson, do you know who to contact, and how to contact them, to raise issues with the BDUK database/checker.
I live in a hamlet of 7 houses on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Our postcode is in the Lot 7 area. Some years ago (starting just pre-Covid), County Broadband announced plans to provide us with FTTP. Most of us signed up for the announced service, which got to the point of CB contacting us all and getting us the allow them to apply for a Gigabit voucher. Then, about 2 years ago, they wrote to us all and indicated they had removed us from their scope.
If I now use the BDUK checker, it says Gigabit is planned for 5 of the properties, through County Broadband and a Gigabit voucher. The other 2 say they already have access to Gigabit – there is no gigabit service anywhere close to us. We’re 2km from the nearest cabinet, and get 3-5 Mbps FTTC.
The info about our properties on BDUK would, I presume, exclude use from Project Gigabit, but I can see no way to raise our concerns with some appropriate. Any advice you can give would be appreciated.
Property (mis)classifications (White, Grey, Black, and Under Review) under BDUK’s Project Gigabit are periodically reassessed under a national rolling open-market review three times a year (January, May, and September) to update and verify supplier build plans, whereby the telecomm suppliers (are supposed to) submit updated rollout plans to ensure BDUK has the most current picture of existing and planned commercial build across the next 3 years.
If (for example) a supplier’s planned commercial build originally made a property “Grey” then fails to materialize, the property *can* be re-classified as “White” and so then be eligible for Project Gigabit state subsidy.
Similarly, premises in the Under Review properties category (where planned commercial coverage exists but has risks or lacks complete evidence) are continuously monitored. If delivery fails, they are (*supposed* to be) remapped as eligible “White” properties for intervention.
Of course, that’s what’s supposed to happen in theory. You can use (probably already have!) https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-your-gigabit-broadband-availability to check your properties classification/broadband plans. Then, if you know they are wrong, Google is your friend:
AI Overview (normal provisos apply!)
To contact Building Digital UK (BDUK) regarding a wrongly listed or misclassified property on broadband plans:
Email: Send details directly to [email protected].
Include Details: Always provide the property’s UPRN (Unique Property Reference Number) and the specific reason for the error.
Alternative BDUK Contacts:
General BDUK Enquiries: [email protected]
General DSIT Correspondence (BDUK’s parent department): [email protected]
I have previously tried to contact DSIT and BDUK on various emails, and not even received a response. Things may have changed since I first attempted to contact either of them, but I do remember it once being published that they would not deal with end users; only service providers. I know how the Project Gigabit colour classification works, and follow the quarterly updates and reclassifications.
What is interesting (and by complete coincidence) is that I received a letter about the USO today, saying our property is eligible. Now, as I understand it, as well as having a sub-10mbps connection, there also has to be no plans in place to deliver a service. So the USO data appears to contradict what BDUK have recorded. USO is a non-starter – I tried that root when it was first made available, and quoted north of £100k!!! The letter claims it is now more affordable – I doubt it will be close to sensible costs, but may ask again – if not just for the amusement of being quoted a comical amount.
I contacted BDUK by email in September 2022 because premises in the area were wrongly listed as grey as the database they used still had us as to be fibred by Gigaclear a full 10 months after they’d already pulled out. So I know it can be done (email at the time was bduk.dcms.gov.uk). They got back within a day and resolved the query about a week later. That was however following the call for information following initial database publication and so may not be quite the same circumstance you find yourself in.
If you believe your status is wrong as per the situation on the BDUK’s checker, you can ask your current provider to request an Openreach Database Integrity ticket to correct your address’s status.
Until yesterday, since Fibre Heroes/FullFibre pulled out last year, the database was telling me we were getting a commercial build (100% never going to be the case!), but my status is now planned again, via OR, with a nominal completion date of September 2031.
… I should have added that if your current supplier won’t/can’t do that or nothing happens when they do, then I think your only recourse is direct with BDUK.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll try BDUK.
I don’t currently have a wired supplier to contact, as a 3Mbps service wasn’t going to cut it, so I currently have Starlink and 5G for useable, redundant connectivity. My hope is that we eventually get fibre availability so that I can drop one.
The whole process is so infuriating. We are one of a small (20 or so houses) that can’t get full fibre in our village, despite the fact that all the properties the other side of the railway bridge can, via openreach. To add insult to injury the exchange is nextdoor to our house.
We were either never scoped, or descoped. FTTPoD was an initial desk survey of over £100k.
So now I’m stuck with Starlink, at £80/month for 350Mbps.
Do addresses classed as “LOC” get included in this?
no company will build to us despite address checkers and a never ending stream of spam mail through the door promising to provide 5gig speeds.
I live in the middle of a city so I’m not “rural” but according to these companies I am impossible to reach.
BDUK build whilst every man and his dog was doing commercial build was always was a massive waste of taxpayer’s money.
Public funding only gets paid out when builds complete, and it was targeting areas not due to be covered by commercial builds, while descoping those where commercial operators ultimately managed to reach – precisely to avoid wasting taxpayers money.
The reason why Project Gigabit started in 2021, while commercial activity was at its peak, was primarily because they a) had a pretty good idea of which areas wouldn’t benefit from that (due to learnings from prior programmes + OMRs), and b) could benefit from the build engine / engineers that those commercial efforts had already employed.
Starting later, such as now, would have increased the costs of the project and made it slower to deploy. At least that’s my understanding from chatting with the BDUK folk over the years.
Disgraceful, where can I take legal action
Been waiting years
I’m in Nottinghamshire, CityFibre were supposed to be delivering in January…. 2029 which was ridiculous
I get about 2mbps±1, or a crappy 4G with colossal unuseable latency
This is shocking, how is this allowed to happen
All while people already with 1gb, get 1.6gb or 2.2gb
Why would you want to take legal action, and what grounds given that you can get a very decent 100/200/400 Mbps service from Starlink?
Why are they doing this now why didn’t they do the rollout I have been with them for ages earlier might not leave now
I waws going to move to youfibre or virginmedia or ee
“Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes. Revised to cover around 6,000 premises backed with £19.8 million investment through Project Gigabit. ORIGINAL: contract to provide around 25,000 hard-to-reach premises.”
I live in lot 12 and was/still am – I have no idea – one of these properties.
I checked the availability checker, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-your-gigabit-broadband-availability, and it says no plans to build to my house.
And “We are considering whether this address could be included in a Project Gigabit contract or what alternatives might be available to improve the broadband connection to this address.” Erm… but it was in a Gigabit contract.
Could someone explain this to me in very simple words? Have I gone from BDUK full fibre plan, to out of BDUK scope, yet with no one else planning to build to my house? So gone back 5 years?