Cityfibre has today confirmed that they’ve begun the construction phase of their £50m project – supported by civil engineering firm Lanes-i – to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to “almost every home and business” in the Kent (England) town of Maidstone.
So far as we can tell, most of the operator’s initial build will be focused upon the Allington area of Kent, but they’ll face plenty of competition from gigabit-capable rivals. Virgin Media already has strong coverage of the town, while both Openreach and Netomnia (YouFibre) are also deploying their own full fibre in the same location. Some limited coverage also exists from Hyperoptic and OFNL, while Trooli has a nearby rollout in Loose.
NOTE: Cityfibre is supported by ISPs like Vodafone, TalkTalk (Future Fibre), Zen Internet, Giganet, iDNET and more, but they aren’t all live or available in every area yet.
The build forms part of Cityfibre’s wider effort to cover up to 8 million premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) – across around 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). So far, the operator has already covered 2 million UK premises, including 1.8m Ready For Service (RFS) via ISPs (here).
