Derby City Council is delighted to receive the news that the city is to be included in the second phase of CityFibre’s rollout of a new Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network.
CityFibre’s UK wide £2.5bn investment, first announced in October 2018, is supported by residential internet service provider Vodafone and aims to cover 5 million UK premises by 2025. Derby is included in the list of cities and towns in phase two of the scheme with a £500 million investment covering 1 million homes.
On completion, the total economic impact of full fibre in these locations alone could exceed £16.3bn, creating over 115,000 indirect jobs.
Derby City Council will continue to work closely with CityFibre to facilitate their investment and to help them manage the installation work.
Cllr Matthew Holmes, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning & Transportation said:
I am delighted that this innovative company has chosen to make this city one of their next priorities for substantial investment in broadband infrastructure in the UK. This announcement allows us to move towards delivery of one the Conservative administrations key manifesto pledges made in May this year and will benefit a huge number of businesses and residents. They will be able to tap into incredibly fast upload and download speeds, something that so called ‘superfast’ and ‘ultrafast’ broadband doesn’t offer. For the public sector, this also offers an significant opportunity for us to link our infrastructure, from offices, venues, schools, transport network to hospitals and community hubs. There is also the expectation that this will assist in the delivery of a 5G mobile network connectivity across the City and also facilitate the delivery of public WiFi. For Derby this is a game changer and will allow us to meet the connectivity needs of the future given advancements in AI, smart cities and autonomy.