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CityFibre to start work on Peterborough fibre network in May with Voda due to launch services early next year
Vodafone and CityFibre will roll out a full fibre broadband service in the U.K. city of Peterborough, they announced this week.
The pair have selected Peterborough as the third location to be covered by their fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) partnership announced late last year.
Their aim is to roll out FTTP to up to 5 million homes and businesses in the U.K. by 2025, and they have committed to a joint £500 million (€564 million) investment in the initial phase of the project, which will take 1 GB broadband to 1 million premises by 2021.
The project got underway in Milton Keynes at the start of this year and Aberdeen was named as the second city to benefit from the scheme last month.
CityFibre on Thursday said it will invest at least £30 million to extend its existing fibre infrastructure in Peterborough to almost every home and business in the city, with work due to begin in May. As the retail service provider, Vodafone start offering its Vodafone Gigafast Broadband service to customers by early 2019.
Under its broader partnership with CityFibre, Vodafone has exclusivity on service provision on the network at present, but the infrastructure will ultimately be open to others.
In the announcement, CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch took the opportunity once again to share his opinion on the importance of a third digital infrastructure in the U.K. that will compete with BT Openreach and Virgin.
"Our network has delivered superior services, at a lower cost than BT Openreach," Mesch said, referring to CityFibre’s existing presence in this city.
"It has fuelled economic growth, innovation and inward investment and paved the way for us to bring full fibre to the entire city," he said. "Lessening dependence on BT Openreach and Virgin is not only good for Peterborough, its residents and businesses, it is critical for the U.K. as a whole."
