NEXT GIGABIT CITY
CityFibre to establish next ‘Gigabit city’
CityFibre launches ultra-fast digital network alternative for Bristol in partnership with Triangle Networks. The deal builds upon the recent £90m acquisition of the national UK assets of KCOM. Matthew Peach reports
Bristol Gigabit City will be officially launched at an event in February 2016, at which point a city-wide marketing campaign will begin, to raise awareness of the benefits to businesses from the gigabit speed services on offer and enabling CityFibre to map demand for local network expansion projects. • In early 2015, the city announced the Bristol is Open initiative, an open, scalable and programmable “smart city” digital infrastructure designed to link people and machines with new services, technologies and applications. The city-wide optical network is designed to enable “greater interaction between people and places, with more machine-to-machine communications through the Internet of Things, which ultimately gives citizens the ability to engage more fully with their environment”, the developer’s announcement stated. CityFibre acquires KCOM’s national assets for £90m in December 2015, CityFibre announced the £90 million acquisition of KCOM’s national fibre and duct network assets, following CityFibre’s securing of financing of £180 million. This cash injection was to facilitate the acquisition and to enable the fast-growing alternative service provider to continue to commercialise its national network. Both transactions will serve to increase the number of CityFibre’s metro footprints to 36 cities across the UK and enable the company to target a total of 50 cities by 2020, eventually reaching 20% of the UK market if its hopes are achieved.
as traffic congestion and air pollution; and the trialling of driverless car technology. Paul Anslow, MD at Triangle Networks commented, “We’re excited to be CityFibre’s Gigabit City launch partner on this project. We have been watching demand for ultra-fast services grow exponentially in recent years and this project has the potential to unlock a tide of demand for faster, more resilient and more affordable services. Triangle will be launching gigabit services as standard, which is far faster than those possible on fibre- to-the-cabinet networks that are restricted by the limitations of copper wires. Our approach enables businesses to stop concerning themselves with bandwidth restrictions and make the most of new ways of working to improve their experience and drive the bottom line.” Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre added, “We’re delighted to be able to announce Bristol as our next Gigabit City project and to be working with Triangle Networks to ensure its success. Bristol is already a UK leader in digital innovation, but its business community has not yet had the opportunity to take full-advantage. This project provides that opportunity and I could think of nowhere more exciting to begin our latest project. Less than one month after announcing our acquisition of KCOM’s networks, we have begun to commercialise them. As the UK’s largest alternative infrastructure provider, this is the first of many new Gigabit City launches to come on our expanded footprint of 36 cities across the UK.”
Triangle Networks, a locally based internet service provider, which has “hundreds of existing customers in the city”, according to CityFibre, will be the Bristol: Gigabit City launch partner. Triangle said it would be committing a minimum of 100 new customers on the network by the end of 2016. The company will work closely with CityFibre to stimulate business across the city, to connect to the pure fibre network and take advantage of the so-called “Gigabit-speed-as-standard” services. As one of the most digitally advanced cities in the UK, Bristol is well suited to making the most of the new optical communications network infrastructure. The network will complement Bristol’s renowned smart city strategy, which has already made the city a test bed for innovative digital projects. These include Bristol university’s city-sensor network; ‘Bristol is Open’, a laboratory exploring big data solutions to problems such
Matthew Peach C ityFibre, a major independent provider of fibre optic network infrastructure in the UK, announced in mid-January that Bristol is to become the UK’s next “Gigabit City”. This is the first major installation announced by the company following its £90 million acquisition of KCOM’s national fibre networks in December 2015 (KCOM, formerly known as Kingston Communications, is a communications and IT services provider. CityFibre will begin work to commercialise 82km of pure fibre network assets in and around Bristol, creating a modern, alternative digital infrastructure in the city.
CityFibre has already established gigabit networks in several UK cities.
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ISSUE 6 | Q1 2016
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