Vodafone is to restructure its deal with CityFibre in a bid to speed up the rollout of fibre infrastructure in the UK.
Full-fibre Broadband is so far only available to 11% of UK premises through infrastructure companies CityFibre and Openreach. It is generally defined as being capable of running upload and download speeds at 1 Gbps.
Under the new agreement with CityFibre, Vodafone will offer Vodafone Gigafast Broadband on a rolling, 12-month exclusive basis as homes become available for service in each of the 12 towns and cities covered in phase one of the deployment. Previously, the period of exclusivity was dependent on the total time taken to roll out the network in each city.
The new commercial terms cover the 12 towns and cities where CityFibre has already deployed and additional rollouts.
Separately, TalkTalk is selling its FibreNation business to CityFibre for £200 million, subject to shareholder approval.
The move will give TalkTalk subscribers access to CityFibre’s full-fibre network.