A trial of next-gen fibre broadband in York could see thousands more residents and businesses plugging in to speeds of up to 1,000Mbps.
CityFibre’s joint venture with Sky and TalkTalk has aimed to see roughly 20,000 homes and firms able to order pure fibre broadband services, which would provide speeds well in excess of the current national average.
Today, infrastructure provider CityFibre announced that the first phase of construction had been finished, which paves the way for that 20,000 footprint to be increased. While CityFibre isn’t being any more specific at the moment, CEO Greg Mesch said that the next phase of the project will give everyone a clearer picture.
Mesch said: “We are really pleased with what we have accomplished so far. As a team, Sky, TalkTalk and CityFibre have validated a network design for true ultra-fast Fibre to the Home (FTTH) for residents and Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) for business users.
“This next phase will accelerate the deployment and will further help to determine the scalability of the infrastructure.”
Later in the year, Sky and TalkTalk will launch ultrafast services using the CityFibre network, which is being built with help from Fujitsu.
The network is independent from BT’s Openreach network. Customers will be able to get a more reliable service with speeds not dictated by proximity to telephone exchanges or street cabinets, as is the case with ADSL and FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) services.
While BT does offer FTTP services on its Openreach network, both Sky and TalkTalk are unhappy with the costs BT has charged for access to its FTTC products. Dido Harding, TalkTalk’s CEO has spoken of plans to reach up to 10 million homes with pure fibre broadband in a Google Fiber-style competition.
Meanwhile, Sky has been involved in separate fibre trial in Basingstoke in conjunction with Love Digital TV. Despite delivering download speeds of 950Mbps, some residents are not too chuffed with the huge erections Sky has left all over the place.
CityFibre has installed networks in a number of UK towns and cities including Bournemouth, Coventry, Peterborough, Dundee, Bath and Aberdeen. More recently, the service provider revealed plans to install fibre optic broadband in Edinburgh and Newport.
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