CityFibre to build an $800 million fibre network

The race to be the fastest, most up-to-date, or most advanced in various fields is always ongoing in the world, and for many reasons. First, we had the arms race. Then, it was the race to see who would get to space first. It eventually became a race of wealth and power, then of rapid development. And although things have toned down in general, the race to be the most stable (and not just the richest) nation is still ongoing all over the globe.

The future of the commercial world depends largely on broadband technology. Businesses and corporations are slowly building an online presence rather than just strengthening their physical ones. So it’s safe to say that a lot of countries are now on a quest to provide superfast broadband services, and fast.

If you look at the entire fibre network scene in general, you will notice that the UK is actually lagging behind the EU, where it has been reported that fibre deployments, broadband upgrades and expansions, as well as IPTV were all on the rise. But several players in the industry are looking to change that.

It was just this week that BT Broadband announced that they were going to be able to complete deployment of fibre across two-thirds of the UK by 2014, which was a year ahead of schedule. The broadband giant’s new fibre service will be called Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP), which can deliver speeds of up to ten times faster than what their current service provides, pushing the speed to around 70-100 Mbps. In light of the announcement, BT had said that the accelerated deployment “will help the government achieve its ambition of having the best super-fast broadband network in Europe by 2015.” But maybe there’s more to it than just that–say, a little bit of competition, perhaps.

Prior to BT’s announcement, there have been complaints raised that British providers weren’t being aggressive enough about bringing fibre to the UK, with one plausible reason being the lack of competition. Perhaps as an answer to that, CityFibre Holdings of London has risen to the challenge by looking to raise over $800 million to set up a fibre network that will offer gigabit-per-second connections to close to a million households and establishments in the UK. The network will also be able to reach public service areas.

Aside from offering the fibre service, CityFibre also plans to open up the network to third-party providers who could purchase fibre on a wholesale basis. CityFibre’s CEO,  Greg Mesch, says that the planned network will also be able to reach over 50,000 businesses aside from the households.

Source – Gigaom