Fiber optic infrastructure developer CityFibre has announced that their Gigabit capable fibre optic Ethernet and broadband (FTTP) network in the West Midlands city of Coventry, which serves local businesses and public sector sites, is now been used to connect the majority of local GP practices.
Cityfibre has had a network in the city since 2014 (here), which stems from a strategic partnership with Coventry City Council that enabled them to acquire an existing 140km long metro fibre network and re-purpose it to help serve local businesses with connections of up to 1Gbps. Today the network extends to 180km and serves over 400 public sector sites, as well as “hundreds of businesses“.
The operator is now also working in partnership with systems integrator, Pinacl Solutions, to connect 62 of the region’s doctors’ surgeries and community health centres to their very own next-generation full-fibre network. Apparently the first connections under this latest extension are expected to go live in May 2018.
Coventry is just one of 50 UK cities where Cityfibre have either built / acquired a network or intend to build one by 2020. The city also stands a reasonable chance of becoming one of the first to be chosen by Vodafone and Cityfibre under their joint 1Gbps FTTH Broadband network deployment for UK residential properties (here). However we’re currently still waiting for Vodafone to confirm their roll-out plan.