CityFibre and toob agree strategic relationship in industry-first

• Terms agreed to provide CityFibre’s wholesale customers access to toob’s growing network footprints
• toob expands its full fibre broadband services over CityFibre’s national network

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has signed an agreement with toob, a full fibre network builder and broadband provider based in the South of England, enabling them to extend their successful broadband retail proposition across CityFibre’s national footprint.

toob is building its own fibre networks in the South of England over which it has successfully marketed an industry leading symmetrical 900Mbps product for just £25/m, one of the most competitive ‘gigabit speed’ products on the market. The agreement will enable toob to extend its market reach, launching its ultra-fast services over CityFibre’s network. Its services will first go live in Portsmouth today, before launching in areas that are adjacent to its own rollouts.

The companies have also agreed Heads of Terms for a wholesale aggregation partnership which will see toob’s current and future network builds incorporated into CityFibre’s ‘Ready for Service’ footprint, expanding the addressable market for all CityFibre’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners.

The technical integration of toob’s footprint is expected to be completed by summer 2023 and will provide CityFibre’s ISP partners with access to over 100,000 homes across Southampton and Camberley. toob is committed to building a network to more than a million premises across the South of England over the next 5 years, all of which will be made available to CityFibre’s ISP partners at the same service levels as CityFibre’s own network.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre said: “We are delighted to welcome toob on board as a service provider partner on our networks. They’ve had great success driving take-up of their services and we look forward to helping them extend their exciting service proposition to millions of new homes over our network.

“This deal also represents the UK’s first major partnership between infrastructure builders, establishing a new model of wholesale aggregation that significantly accelerates and expands the addressable footprint available to our wholesale ISP partners. For smaller fibre network builders which currently only offer their own retail broadband services across their footprint, it also establishes an opportunity to expand their retail offering, opening a lucrative wholesale revenue stream and maximising take-up over their network.”

Nick Parbutt, CEO & Founder at toob said: “toob is delighted to be partnering with CityFibre. Opening our own network to other ISPs has been part of our strategy from the outset, and partnering with CityFibre allows ISPs to access the toob full fibre network. Likewise expanding our very successful brand and proposition in the region by using CityFibre’s Network provides a great opportunity to capitalise on our investment in the region, offer our proposition to more customers and ultimately grow the company.”