CityFibre and the City of York Council shortlisted for the NextGen Challenge Awards

CityFibre are very pleased to announce that we have been shortlisted for the 2012 NextGen Challenge Awards! Our partnership with the City of York Council to develop a transformational fibre infrastructure has reached the top five in NextGen’s ‘Collaborative Advantage’ category. By integrating their separate administration, health, libraries and education networks onto a metro-fibre ring, the City of York Council not only transformed services and saved money, but also created the backbone for a city-wide Fibre-to-the-Home network that will position the city as the Digital Infrastructure Capital of the North. Originally setting out on a journey to consolidate its network service provision and associated management requirements, enable economies of scale and create a single platform, the City of York Council ended up anchoring the building of a truly transformational city-wide fibre network that will have a significant impact on the local economy by seeing gigabit level, affordable connectivity available to residents and businesses. Speaking on the collaboration, James Alexander, leader of City of York Council, said: “We want York to become a template for the type of city-wide fibre networks that are so badly needed by the UK's towns and cities to help them overcome their challenges and thrive in a digital service economy while operating within the tightest budgets for a generation.” The NextGen Challenge Awards showcase the best in next generation digital access infrastructure innovation and are designed to give companies the opportunity to highlight achievements in developing and deploying better broadband. The awards will run alongside NextGen 12, the UK’s leading event for next generation broadband activity. CityFibre will be attending this event, so please do get in touch if you would like to connect at the conference! Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre said “Our collaboration with City of York Council is leading the way as a solution that allows all public, private and residential sectors to be connected across a pure fibre optic infrastructure designed with digital services in mind; sparking economic growth, innovation and job creation. We are delighted that the success of this partnership has been recognised by NextGen and shortlisted for this award. We are up against some stiff competition from other key players in this space, including projects from o2, Gigaclear, Velocity and DEFRA, but it is great to see alternative approaches to delivering true next generation access being recognised in these awards. Winners will be announced on Monday, 8th October 2012. We will keep you posted! For further information on the awards, please visit the NextGen website. For further information on the CityFibre and City of York Council collaboration, please visit the CityFibre website to read the case study.