CityFibre Holdings Ltd., which recently took on responsibility for the completion of an unfinished 100Mbps capable fibre optic ( FTTH ) broadband ISP network in Bournemouth (Dorset), has announced that it will invest up to £500 million in order to rollout similar services to connect UK local authorities, 50000 businesses and one million homes.

The effort could help to create "thousands of jobs" and will be supported by newly appointed "advisor" Macquarie Capital (MC), which specialises in corporate finance and should help the project to raise new capital. MC has experience in large-scale telecoms infrastructure, such as with Telstra and Australia's NBN project.



CityFibre's goal is to build both further citywide metro fibre and pure 100Mbps to 1000Mbps (1Gbps) capable Fibre-to-the-Premises ( FTTP ) networks, which will be used by "leading" ISPs (they've yet to announce any big ISP partners beyond a couple of niche operators), businesses, home users and local authorities.

Rollout of the new service is expected to commence in early 2012 and will build upon its completed dark fibre style networks in York, Ayr and Dundee (not to be confused with domestic platforms); not to mention the troubled FTTH project for 24,000 homes in Bournemouth; our recent CityFibre Interview covered that in more detail.

CityFibre Holdings has so far been successful in turning around the financial disaster left by the i3 Group's similar attempts (here). Hopefully Macquarie Capital doesn't end up making the same mistakes as Total Asset Finance (TAF), which ended in an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

UPDATE 2:19pm

In related news Ofcom has today published a consultation on applying the electronic communications code to CityFibre Metro Networks Limited under section 107(6) of the Communications Act 2003. If approved, this will give the company powers to carry out street works in relation to the rollout of fibre-based telecoms networks in the UK (here). The end date is 5th December 2011.