CityFibre accelerates national ‘Gigabit City’ roll out with £30million funding round

City communications

CityFibre accelerates national ‘Gigabit City’ roll out with £30million funding round

9 June 2014

Fibre infrastructure firm invites UK towns and cities to attract infrastructure investment in ambitious plan to connect the country London, 9th June 2014 – Leading fibre infrastructure provider CityFibre will accelerate plans to roll out Gigabit Cities throughout the UK after an oversubscribed £30 million secondary fundraising was approved by its board today. CityFibre enables Gigabit Cities via its unique shared fibre infrastructure model, delivering future-proof, gigabit speed networks for Internet service providers in the public, private and consumer sectors. This latest funding round adds to the £16.5 million the company raised at its IPO just four months ago and brings a number of major financial institutions to its register. The significant capital injection will support the deployment of networks in more than 20 new Gigabit Cities. The expansion will ensure over 1 million homes, business and public sector sites throughout the country are provided with cutting edge gigabit connectivity by 2016. The company has already seen substantial interest from local authorities across the country and as part of its process to determine suitable candidates for future Gigabit City projects, CityFibre will be opening an application process for the next 10 cities to be prioritised for roll-out. This latest round of funding marks another key stage in the acceleration of CityFibre’s development. The recent announcement of its joint venture with Sky and TalkTalk to rollout fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks in York and two further cities - the first time two major service providers have teamed with an alternative infrastructure provider. This was followed by an announcement last week that it had increased its national network footprint by nearly 50% with the acquisition of Coventry’s city-wide fibre network from the city council. In Peterborough, the company’s demand aggregation campaign has seen 15% of businesses in the city register their interest in services before construction began. CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch commented: “We are delighted to have a strong capital base behind us and we can now put our foot firmly on the pedal in our roll-out of Gigabit Cities. All the evidence points to the social and economic advantages enjoyed by cities with a future-proofed digital infrastructure and we welcome the increased interest from cities and their service providers in our shared fibre infrastructure solution. “As a nation we are at a critical moment in our economic evolution, faced with a choice between the technology of the past and the fibre promise of the future. The internet-enabled economy is responsible for a higher level of GDP contribution in the UK than in any G-20 country, but broadband infrastructure lags behind that of many others that have been faster to invest in pure fibre infrastructure. “Amongst those early adopters, in almost every case, the key catalyst was the presence in the market of a new source of capital and vision. With today’s funding completion, CityFibre is well positioned to occupy this role in the UK.”

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With network projects in over 60 cities and construction underway to reach up to 8 million homes