CityFibre, Sky And TalkTalk Complete First Phase Of York FTTP Rollout

CityFibre, Sky and TalkTalk have completed the first phase of their Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) joint-venture in York and say they are encouraged by their initial attempt to create infrastructure independent of BT Openreach.,

The partners announced last year they were to build a city-wide FTTP network in York with the intention of taking the model nationwide if the venture was a success. TalkTalk says it hopes to eventually provide 60 percent of the UK population with 1Gbps broadband.

CityFibre operates a number of FTTP networks across the country, while Sky and TalkTalk offer fibre services to customers through wholesale agreements with Openreach.

York FTTP network

They say the creation of rival infrastructure will reduce their dependency on BT while offering faster speeds than those available on the Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) that makes up most of the Openreach network.

The York network is based on CityFibre’s existing infrastructure and the first phase has allowed the partners to test out network design principles, engineering processes and deployment economics. Future phases will continue to test such methods and it is hoped that Sky and TalkTalk will be able to offer services to consumers and businesses later this year.

“We are really pleased with what we have accomplished so far,” said Greg Mesch, CityFibre CEO. “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. Without the bottlenecks that exist in traditional networks, an ultra-fast fibre infrastructure will future-proof a city, offering superior quality of service and higher speeds as demand for bandwidth increases.”

BT’s rivals have long been critical of the company’s apparent dominance in fibre and claim there is not as much competition as there is in the copper market. Ofcom has ruled BT must maintain a minimum margin to ensure it doesn’t undercut its competitors, but this has not quietened calls for greater regulation.

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