CityFibre Completes Peterborough FTTP Network

Work on a 90 kilometre fibre to the premise (FTTP) network in Peterborough has been completed, offering businesses and the public sector access to broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps.

The ‘Peterborough CORE’ network was built within 11 months by CityFibre and now connects 107 public sector sites, including offices, data centres, schools and hospitals as well as the city’s business community.

More than 1,000 businesses – a quarter of all firms in the city – registered their interest in the network during the planning stage and influenced CityFibre’s decision to expand to four business parks that would not have been covered in the original blueprint. To date, 100 companies have signed up through CityFibre’s service provider partners.

CORE strength

“In less than one year Peterborough has been transformed into a Gigabit City. With a future-proof digital infrastructure at its heart, Peterborough has a digital head-start on the rest of the country,” said CEO Greg Mesch. “Its public sector is already more efficient and capable of innovation while its business community is becoming more competitive and productive.

“Through Peterborough’s Gigabit City project we have demonstrated the appetite for next generation gigabit services by both the public and private sector and the speed at which cities throughout the nation can benefit from our model.”

Peterborough says the arrival of the network is a major boost for the city’s economy

“We cannot overstate the value of a gigabit speed digital infrastructure to our city,” added Marco Cereste, leader of Peterborough City Council. “As a Gigabit City, we have a significant competitive advantage over other areas and are able to lead the way with an innovative and integrated digital strategy. Businesses are hungry for bandwidth and we recognise that because of this network, Peterborough is becoming an even more attractive place to build a business.”

CityFibre operates a number of other FTTP networks across the UK and recently announced plans to expand to Edinburgh. The firm is also involved in a joint-venture with Sky and TalkTalk that could eventually provide a rival to the Openreach network in urban areas.

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