CityFibre is the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform. Founded in 2011, the company established a vision to bring more choice to the market by unlocking the digital potential of communities across the UK. It saw an opportunity to roll out full fibre infrastructure in areas of the UK where it was needed most, catapulting the UK onto an equal footing with the rest of Europe.
The availability of high capacity infrastructure has become critical in unlocking the value of digital services for residential, business, mobile and public sector customers. But rolling out that infrastructure is no small feat. CityFibre needed partners that aligned with its vision for a better-connected nation.
Neos Networks shares this vision, with both companies having expressed similar expansion plans for delivering enhanced, high capacity, high speed fibre connectivity across the UK. Over several years, Neos Networks and CityFibre have developed a strategic relationship that ensures the country has access to high-availability, resilient and secure connectivity services.
The challenge
As part of its ongoing national network expansion plans and its investment in connecting the UK to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) services, CityFibre set out to deploy a new full fibre network along the south coast. The new high-speed full fibre network will link Brighton, Portsmouth, Worthing, Bognor Regis, Chichester, Horsham, Bracknell and Bournemouth with Reading.
CityFibre identified the south coast corridor as an important target area to improve its reach and service capabilities. The network would also allow the company’s service provider partners to offer gigabit-level speeds to business and consumer customers locally. The challenge, however, was that the roll out of the network was to take place during a period of global supply chain issues and chip shortages. CityFibre needed a partner who could provide additional infrastructure to enable it to offer reliable, high capacity, high bandwidth services across the region in spite of these challenges.
They recognised that achieving their goal would require a Dark Fibre network that could deliver reliability, integrity and complete control. In doing so, CityFibre would be able to drive out as much capacity as required, while also benefitting from the value economics that a Dark Fibre network offers.
The outcome
CityFibre selected Neos Networks to provide the Dark Fibre connectivity necessary for them to deliver their gigabit service. By choosing Neos Networks for the Dark Fibre infrastructure, CityFibre connects into the company’s nationwide backbone fibre network, which spans 676 points of presence (PoPs), 90 data centres, and 550 exchanges. Neos Networks’ vast fibre footprint made it an obvious and compelling choice for CityFibre, which plans to bring full fibre connectivity within reach of up to eight million homes in towns and cities across the UK as part of its up to £4billion Gigabit City Investment Programme.
Connecting CityFibre into Neos Networks’ Dark Fibre infrastructure has been a success, with the links to Reading delivered in less than 12 months. This has allowed CityFibre to begin lighting up its high-speed full fibre network linking major towns and cities in the South East of England and across the south coast corridor.
CityFibre can now bring all the towns and cities across the full link on stream. CityFibre’s service providers can then begin to actively sell local access to the full fibre network. Thanks to CityFibre and Neos Networks’ collaboration, partners will be able to offer connectivity speeds of up to 1Gbps for upload and download.
“It is very important for us to be able to offer to our partners high-speed, full fibre with both local access and nationwide fibre coverage. Working with Neos Networks across the UK helps us to deliver on this connectivity ambition.”
David Tomalin, Group Chief Technology Officer, CityFibre
