York to become the digital infrastructure capital of the North

York to be at the forefront of digital connectivity as council builds on partnership with CityFibre to plan next phase of pure fibre optic network Fibre optic infrastructure provider, CityFibre Holdings has today announced it will be building on its partnership with City of York Council to bring next generation broadband to York’s residents and businesses. York has a digital ‘backbone’ in place, as CityFibre built a 103km fibre optic ring last year which has already connected 110 sites in the city including schools, council buildings and York NHS. The council and CityFibre are now planning to build a city-wide network from the existing infrastructure to give businesses and residents access to pure Fibre To The Home and Premises. Speaking at the York and North Yorkshire NextGen roadshow today, James Alexander, leader of City of York Council said: “High speed Internet access is essential for success in a modern world and we’ve already benefitted from this in terms of delivery of council and local NHS services as well as trialling free Wi-Fi access. “Now we want to take this to the next level to allow York’s business community to benefit from this superfast digital network to help them develop new markets, attract new customers and be more competitive on both a national and international level – a truly exciting prospect.” In its Council Plan, the City of York Council has announced a bold target to put York at the forefront of digital connectivity in the UK with 95% of all its businesses having access to minimum connection speeds of 25 megabits per second by the end of 2014. The completion of this superfast digital infrastructure will allow businesses and residents to access unprecedented gigabit services which far exceed this target. It will now undertake a detailed planning exercise with CityFibre to decide exactly how this next phase will be delivered. Detailed planning has now commenced for the delivery of this new fibre network. Greg Mesch, chief executive at CityFibre explained: “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.” James Alexander concluded: “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.” Media contact: Deborah Simcock Bell Pottinger M. 07810 834548 e. cityfibre@insightmkt.com About CityFibre Holdings CityFibre is one of the UK’s leading fibre optic infrastructure providers. We design and build superfast infrastructure for the digital age rather than piecing together networks that were meant for less bandwidth hungry services such as telephone or TV. By building these dedicated private networks for the public and private sectors, we unleash unlimited speeds on future-proofed technology. Our projects comprise point-to-point connections, metro rings that connect multiple sites in a town or city in a fibre ‘ring’ and Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks that make possible Next Generation Access and gigabit level services direct to people’s homes. CityFibre manages over 100 private fibre projects under long-term contracts with local authorities, police forces, healthcare organisations and universities, connecting more than 350 sites and data centres across the UK. We also operate seven separate metropolitan fibre rings such as the one recently completed in the City of York. These extensive fibre networks cover a total footprint exceeding 2,000,000 people and over 57,000 businesses. With almost 30,000 Km of fibre in the ground we are the UK’s largest independent provider of fibre in secondary cities. In Bournemouth, CityFibre owns the largest FTTH project in the UK. With over 24,000 homes ready for service in 2012, the network enables service providers to deliver unprecedented superfast broadband with speeds of up to 1Gbps.