CityFibre announced this week a seven-year deal to extend its Edinburgh fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network to a further 294 council-owned sites.
The deal with global IT firm CGI will see CityFibre expand the coverage of its planned 150km Edinburgh FTTP network – parts of which went live in May – by a further 100km. Extending the network is expected to take 12 months, at which point the whole thing will connect 500 premises, including 137 schools.
The agreement is worth £5.6 million and is part of a broader, £186 million ICT infrastructure procurement programme outsourced by Edinburgh Council to CGI.
"This contract…indicates the appetite from city leaders to embrace a new generation of infrastructure," said CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch, in a statement on Tuesday. "In our Gigabit Cities, we are now a true infrastructure alternative to BT Openreach," he said.
Edinburgh is one of a handful of so-called Gigabit Cities in the U. K. in which CityFibre is rolling out FTTP.
The network extension work will be undertaken in partnership with Scottish network services provider Commsworld, a company that CityFibre has been working with since March, when it chose Edinburgh to be part of the Gigabit City project.
"One of the exciting things CGI will do through its chosen partners, including CityFibre and Commsworld, is speed up our move to greater online capability giving residents and businesses greater flexibility to engage with the council and carry out their transactions digitally," said Alasdair Rankin, convener of Edinburgh City Council’s finance and resources committee.
"This will make us a more efficient and effective organisation," he said.
