The i3 Group and Fibrecity have today announced that their fibre optic based 100Mbps Fibre-to-the-Home ( FTTH ) broadband ISP network will be extended to reach more than 1 million UK homes and businesses over the next four years! The service, which is already available in the south coast city of Bournemouth, can also temporarily "boost" speeds up to 1Gbps for quick downloading.

It was confirmed today that Fibrecity networks are now planned for Derby, Halton, Nottingham, Plymouth and York, with a target to commence building within the next 12 months. These cities are in addition to the networks already underway in Bournemouth and Dundee, which have proven the consumer demand for superfast. More than 35,000 homes have already signed up to be connected in Bournemouth alone.


Further cities under consideration for Fibrecity networks include Belfast, Aberdeen, Ipswich and Bristol. Fibrecity Holdings and Birmingham City Council are also in initial discussions for the construction of Fibrecity Birmingham. That's a big poke in the eye for BT and Virgin Media UK, which will soon have some competition.


Elfed is quite clearly taking a stab at BT's Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) solution, which offers download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upload speeds of 2-10Mbps. We suspect that the timing is no accident either, following just a few hours after BT announced a major expansion of its fibre optic broadband rollout (here).

This is of course excellent news to anybody who lives in the aforementioned cities, though it still leaves rural residents somewhat out in the cold. In fairness though, i3 Group are a smaller private company and their FTTH project is very costly to deploy. We would not expect them to deploy into rural areas, at least not until the controversial Fibre Tax is tackled once and for all.