CityFibre and Vodafone to roll out full fibre broadband across Peterborough

Fibre optic infrastructure designer, builder, owner and operator CityFibre announced Peterborough as the next roll-out city under its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) partnership with Vodafone on Thursday.

The AIM-traded firm said Peterborough was the third city launched under the strategic partnership with Vodafone UK, which aimed to deliver full fibre to at least one million homes across twelve UK cities by 2021.

Fibre-to-the-premises means the running of glass fibre cables all the way to the customer’s home or business, providing some of the fastest internet speeds currently possible.

Most ‘fibre’ connections sold in the UK are on the BT Openreach or Liberty Global's Virgin Media networks, which usually uses a copper twisted pair or coaxial cable for the final connection to the customer’s premises, bottlenecking speeds.

CityFibre said it had committed to invest at least £30m in the infrastructure project, which would extend its fibre network to nearly every home and business in the city, with construction starting in May.

Vodafone would use the network to bring its ‘Gigafast Broadband’ product to customers by early 2019.

Peterborough was said to be already benefiting from CityFibre's existing fibre network, built in 2013, following the award of a major public-sector contract.

Most schools, council offices and the main hospital currently benefitted from full fibre access, and recently high-definition CCTV and traffic management cameras were added to the network.

Hundreds of businesses were also already connected and benefitting from access to affordable gigabit-speed services.

The company said the network's extension would bring fibre within reach of “thousands more”.

According to figures from industry body Fibre to the Home Council, providing full fibre to just half of all premises could result in a 1.1% rise in annual GDP, CityFibre noted.

When applied to Peterborough, the city-wide fibre roll-out could unlock huge economic growth of more than £700m in gross value added over the next 15 years, it claimed.

“Peterborough is the perfect demonstration of the benefits a third competitive digital infrastructure brings the UK market,” said CityFibre chief executive Greg Mesch.

“Our network has delivered superior services, at a lower cost than BT Openreach.”

Mesch said the network had also fuelled economic growth, innovation and inward investment and paved the way for the company to bring full fibre to the entire city.

“Lessening dependence on BT Openreach and Virgin is not only good for Peterborough, its residents and businesses, it is critical for the UK as a whole.”