CityFibre and Vodafone UK have agreed a major expansion of their strategic partnership in a deal which establishes the latter as the former’s anchor customer nationwide, making long-term volume commitments across CityFibre’s entire eight million home target rollout under a GBP4 billion (USD5.4 billion) investment programme. In a press release regarding the matter, CityFibre said that the expansion builds on a landmark strategic partnership agreed between the two companies back in November 2017, under which Vodafone UK committed to market ultrafast consumer broadband services across a one million home CityFibre footprint in twelve cities.
Since launch, the pair have worked to develop the market and maximise take-up, and claim that their efforts have resulted in Vodafone UK’s ‘Gigafast’ services achieving twice the rate of take-up over CityFibre’s footprint compared to its market share in other parts of the country. Now, anchored by the increased commitment from Vodafone UK, CityFibre said it is making a substantial investment into a new ‘National Access’ network, connecting its rapidly growing footprint of local full fibre networks. According to the fibre provider, this new network ‘will make it far easier, faster and more cost effective for Vodafone and other wholesale partners to bring services to market across its nationwide footprint’. Using the new National Access network, Vodafone UK and other wholesale partners will ultimately be able to provide full fibre services to any premises on CityFibre’s networks, with a new customer ordering a service from a partner expected to be offered an installation date within just five working days of placing their order.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, CityFibre announced the passing of what it called ‘a major milestone’, with it confirming it had made its millionth home ready for service (RFS) under its nationwide rollout of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology. CityFibre meanwhile claims to be on track to reach eight million premises with full fibre by 2025.