Network operator CityFibre has this morning revealed that their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network has now grown to cover 3.6 million UK premises (3.3m RFS), which is up slightly from 3.5m (3.2m RFS) in late January 2024. The network is also home to 400,000 customer connections (up 77% year-on-year).
In case anybody has forgotten, the operator currently aspires to reach up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK subsidy) – or around 30% of the UK – by the end of 2025 (here). But that target has been put under strain by recent changes in their commercial builds and redundancies (here), which partly reflected a need to refocus a lot of resources toward their Project Gigabit contracts (here).
The operator is now looking to grow their network coverage by another 1 million premises this year, but they’ve also previously signalled their expectation that a big chunk of this could be delivered through mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Looking forward over the next two years, such M&A activity alone could theoretically add up to 1.5-3 million extra premises to their coverage, which recently began with the Lit Fibre acquisition (c.300k extra premises built and planned).
According to today’s results, CityFibre now states that they have a “clear path to over 6m premises of its full 8m target.”
Breaking news.. more to follow..