City of York Council strides ahead with more fibre network connections

City of York Council (CYC) along with partners, CityFibre and Pinacl Solutions, is striding ahead with its aim of becoming the most digitally connected city in Europe by 2015 by extending its state-of-the-art pure fibre network. Already connecting over 100 council sites, more than 60 schools and CCTV camera locations, the network reach has recently been expanded to include St Mary’s primary school in the village of Askham Richard and a number of additional new CCTV locations, which are now benefitting from gigabit speed connectivity. “Our growing pure fibre footprint puts us ahead of many other UK towns and cities in terms of our digital connectivity. Digital infrastructure is crucial to underpinning our jobs and growth agenda and along with CityFibre and Pinacl Solutions, we intend to maximise its benefits for the people who live, work and visit here. We will continue to add new premises and services to the network to best support our city’s needs both now and into the future,” says Cllr James Alexander, leader of City of York Council.

St Mary’s primary in the village of Askham Richard is one of the last few schools to be connected to the fibre infrastructure. It joins the growing list of schools in York reaping the benefits of a high-speed internet connection, ensuring schoolchildren and teachers have access no matter where they are located. CityFibre rose to the challenge posed by the school’s rural location, which is one of the furthest away from the metro fibre network. CityFibre laid an additional 3.58 kilometres of fibre to make the connection whilst taking great care to ensure that the natural beauty of the countryside and village were not compromised in any way. St Mary’s and Askham Richard have now gone from being a location that would probably never have got a decent internet connection straight to being able to access gigabit speeds thanks to the investment in fibre infrastructure by CYC and CityFibre.

CityFibre has also completed the connection of five new camera locations to the City of York Council’s dedicated CCTV digital network running on the metro fibre core. This brings the total number of cameras connected to 120 with more planned for completion before the end of the summer.

Rob Hamlin, director of business development at CityFibre commented: “At a time when many UK towns and cities are looking to encourage investment in fibre infrastructure and the need for Gigabit connectivity is growing, York is leading the way with its collaborative approach. CityFibre’s model and expertise in designing and deploying networks enables CYC to increase its connected footprint and hook-up additional sites as required, in a cost efficient and timely fashion. The fibre infrastructure is 100 per cent future-proofed, ready for the addition of even more connections. Our approach to building Gigabit Cities ensures that use of the infrastructure can be maximised to reach every community within a city.

“We are proud of our award-winning partnership with CYC and Pinacl Solutions and the positive results it is bringing to the city of York. Over the next couple of years we aim to deliver even more gigabit capable infrastructure to towns and cities to create more Gigabit Cities across the UK.”

ENDS

CityFibre Media Contact:

Maggie Zaboura Zaboura Consultancy Ltd T. 020 7297 3371 E. maggie@zaboura.com

About CityFibre

CityFibre (www.cityfibre.com) is one of the UK’s leading fibre optic infrastructure providers. By building dedicated fibre optic networks for the public and private sectors, we empower data-hungry users throughout the country, by unleashing unlimited speeds on future-proofed technology.

Our transformational fibre infrastructure projects comprise point-to-point connections, metro rings and Fibre-to-the-Premises networks that make possible Next Generation Access and gigabit level services direct to local authorities, businesses and homes.

CityFibre manages over 100 private fibre projects and seven separate metropolitan fibre networks under long-term contract with local authorities, police forces, healthcare organisations and universities. With almost 30,000km of fibre in the ground, connecting more than 350 sites and data centres across the UK, we are the country’s largest independent provider of fibre in secondary cities.

In Bournemouth, CityFibre owns the largest FTTH project in the UK. With over 21,000 homes ready for service, the network enables service providers to deliver unprecedented superfast broadband with speeds of up to one gigabit per second.