CityFibre has begun rolling out its full-fibre network across all nine regions awarded to the company under the UK Government’s Project Gigabit programme.
Project Gigabit, backed by a £5 billion fund, aims to connect more than 1.3 million homes and businesses in underserved areas over the next five years. CityFibre plans to extend its reach to over eight million premises nationwide, helping to close the digital divide across the country.
This expansion is driven by a mix of public and private investment. The government has provided £782 million in subsidy funding to CityFibre to support the build in harder-to-reach locations, while the company is also investing its own capital to expand coverage beyond the subsidised areas.
Telecoms Minister Sir Chris Bryant said: “No one — no matter where they live or work — should be held back in their personal or professional lives because of lack of digital connectivity. Project Gigabit is providing the tools for people up and down the country to prosper in the digital world, allowing communities to stream, work, and learn online with buffer-free broadband.”
The rollout targets rural and difficult-to-reach communities, ensuring they gain access to ultrafast download speeds and symmetrical upload rates that can transform home life, education and business operations.
CityFibre’s work is already producing tangible benefits in locations where deployment is complete. One early recipient, filmmaker and lecturer Josh Newman from Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, now receives Vodafone’s 2.2 Gbps symmetrical broadband service delivered over CityFibre’s national network.
Newman explained that his previous upload speeds topped out around 18 Mbps, which made transferring large video files slow and often impacted the household’s internet performance. “With full fibre, I can work much more easily and my wife’s often on video meetings, which are now reliable and high quality. Even with the children online for school work and entertainment, the upgrade has meant our household never has to think about bandwidth or worry about getting online.”
His experience reflects the broader promise of Project Gigabit. Communities across Norfolk and Suffolk have begun enjoying similar improvements, with towns and villages that were once considered digitally disadvantaged becoming some of the best-connected places in the UK.
With construction underway in Kent, CityFibre has now started builds in all nine Project Gigabit regions awarded to the company:
- Cambridgeshire
- Norfolk
- Suffolk
- Hampshire
- Leicestershire and Warwickshire
- East and West Sussex
- Kent
- Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes
- East Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: “Project Gigabit made the rollout of full fibre broadband to rural and hard-to-reach areas possible and we’ve already seen the difference that full fibre connectivity makes: supercharging small businesses, connecting communities, and powering your local pub. Our teams have worked incredibly hard to map routes, lay cables, climb telegraph poles, and engage with local communities as we continue to expand the reach of our network and bring the benefits of full fibre broadband to over 1.3 million premises in hard-to-reach areas and more than eight million premises across the UK.”
CityFibre’s investment highlights the growing role of private-sector partners in delivering public digital infrastructure. While the immediate focus of the rollout is enabling gigabit-capable connections in rural areas, the longer-term objective is to future-proof the UK’s broadband infrastructure for decades ahead.
See also: Telecoms in 2025: AI and next-gen infrastructure among key trends
Looking to revamp your digital transformation strategy? Learn more about Digital Transformation Week, an event featuring tracks on IoT, AI and Big Data, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo, with editions in Amsterdam, California and London.
Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars organised by TechForge.