Across the UK, CityFibre is investing £4 billion to bring comprehensive full fibre access to up to 100 towns and cities, targeting some eight million premises or 30 percent of the country’s homes. CityFibre is also providing full fibre for businesses, public assets and to support 5G rollouts across the country and is creating some 10,000 jobs along the way
Building an economic recovery on digital foundations
The economic fallout of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is going to be felt across the world for years to come and the UK will be no different in suffering the consequences. Yet, with a new normal being established, it is time to start looking beyond COVID-19 to how we can maintain and improve the economic recovery when Government support begins to be phased out.
While we cannot know exactly what our economic recovery will look like, one thing is clear – it will not look like the pre-pandemic days of 2019. Research has found 43 percent of employees say that, even once COVID-19 is under control, they would like to increase the amount of homeworking they do. As a result, we will see a great deal more video conferencing and digital business than before the pandemic.
This is why the government’s commitment to roll out full fibre broadband to every UK home is so important, and why private investment from fibre infrastructure providers like CityFibre is vital to support that government commitment. Unlike the current legacy networks that much of the UK is still having to use, full fibre is both superfast – capable of gigabit speeds that can enable everything from lag-free streaming to Virtual Reality meetings – and ultra-reliable.
The importance of full fibre was underlined by the fact that CityFibre contractors have been designated as key workers during lockdown, enabling them to continue installing cables and bringing households and businesses online without interruption. As part of CityFibre’s £100 million investment in Swindon, Cheltenham and Gloucester, in conjunction with contractors Kier Utilities and Volker Highways, many new jobs have been created in the local area.
Building the future
Happily, these jobs are just the start of how full fibre is going to drive economic recovery in this region and across the wider UK. Recently, research from the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) found that areas with good connectivity (500 Mbits/s) had lower long-term unemployment, better productivity, and were more attractive to companies looking to relocate.
COVID-19 is likely to accelerate these trends with more people choosing to either continue working remotely or relocate elsewhere in the UK. Having full fibre means that this can be done seamlessly, without having to worry about a lost connection or being unable to access important documents from a remote server. Simultaneously, having more remote working will expand the talent pool that companies are able to access, which is especially important when it comes to the growing digital skills shortage.
Moreover, full fibre won’t simply help existing businesses thrive. DCMS also found that good connectivity boosts the entrepreneurialism of a region, by enabling more micro-businesses to develop a strong web presence and find otherwise inaccessible customers online.
All of this demonstrates that Swindon’s, Gloucester’s and Cheltenham’s economic recovery will be built on digital foundations, helping to create new jobs and encourage enterprising start-ups. Lightning-fast internet access is essential for a world in which remote working is the new normal and digital shopfronts the primary way for new businesses to generate customers. To find out more about how CityFibre is supporting economic recovery across the South West, visit www.cityfibre.com or contact local city manager Neil Madle at neil.madle@cityfibre.com. To register your interest in taking a Gigafast service when it’s available, visit www.cityfibre.com/residential
