By Neil Madle, Area Manager, CityFibre
Eighteen months after CityFibre began to invest over £150m to provide gigabit-capable full fibre to every home and business in Swindon, Gloucester, Cheltenham and Bath, significant progress has been made. Large parts of Swindon are now complete, and residents are busy signing up for gigabit services with ISPs such as Vodafone, Fibrehop, Zen, Giganet and TalkTalk. By the time the Swindon project is finished in 2024, a world-class, open-access full fibre network will have been provided for the whole town. CityFibre is also providing the infrastructure necessary to support the rollout of 5G in the town.
It’s a similar story in Gloucester, where a £31m whole-city full fibre project started in over a year ago. Large parts of Quedgeley, Hardwicke and Podsmead – where the build commenced – are now completed and hundreds of residents are already connected to the new full fibre gigabit network via ISPs such as Giganet, Air Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen and Fibrehop. Work is currently underway in Kingsway and in other parts of the city.
CityFibre’s £30 Cheltenham project started in the town’s Alstone area a year ago and is progressing across Rowanfield and towards the town centre. The town recently went ‘live’ with multiple ISPs offering services on the CityFibre network. Most recently, a £25m project to provide full fibre throughout the whole of Bath commenced in the city’s Weston area and residents should be able to start taking services this summer. In all four locations, the build projects should be completed by 2024.
These are one-time builds that will cater for the digital needs of residents and businesses for decades to come. In each location, CityFibre is working closely with local authorities and local communities to manage disruption. Where possible, lead contractors such as VolkerSmart and Kier Utilities are coordinating works with other utilities to avoid overbuild and residents are being kept informed by mailings ahead of works in their streets. Although such works inevitably cause some disruption and inconvenience for residents, this will be a short-term pain for significant long-term gain.
The importance of Gigabit connectivity
As the new hybrid way of working becomes more entrenched in our daily lives, the importance of high-speed connectivity for our homes becomes ever greater. Too many people are saddled with poor bandwidth and unreliable connectivity at a time when we’re all becoming more reliant on fast and consistent connections in our homes.
Full Fibre, generally seen as the best way to deliver such near unlimited bandwidth and greater reliability, enables households to enjoy all the latest entertainment at lightning speed while giving access to smart home technology. By using fibre optic cables for every stage of the connection from the customer’s home or business to the Internet, users are offered a significantly superior and more reliable broadband service, capable of Gigabit speeds (1,000 Mbps). Currently, fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) is only available to around 25 percent of premises across the UK and the government wants to see this increase to 85 percent by 2025.
