- Vodafone facilitates acceleration of full-fibre with new CityFibre deal.
- Vodafone joins Openreach trial in Salisbury to replace copper lines with fibre.
Vodafone today announced plans to accelerate the roll out of full-fibre broadband in the UK by restructuring its existing deal with CityFibre to encourage it to build its fibre infrastructure more quickly and to more places.
With full-fibre broadband still only available to around 11% of UK premises, Vodafone is working with infrastructure companies such as CityFibre and Openreach to speed up its delivery. Vodafone is doing this by offering customers broadband download and upload speeds of up to 900Mbps through its Vodafone Gigafast Broadband service.
Under the new agreement with CityFibre, Vodafone will offer Vodafone Gigafast Broadband on a rolling, 12-month exclusive basis as homes become available for service in each of the 12 towns and cities covered in phase one of the deployment. Previously, the period of exclusivity was dependent on the total time taken to roll out the network in each city.
The amended commercial terms agreed with CityFibre, for both the initial 12 towns and cities and additional locations, will enable Vodafone to make the Vodafone Gigafast Broadband service available in new locations and to many more customers.
In addition, Vodafone is backing a new trial in Salisbury in which Openreach will replace every copper-based telephone line within the catchment area with superior and more reliable optical fibre cables. Starting in the spring, Vodafone will migrate its customers in the area to Vodafone Gigafast Broadband without charging an upfront connection fee.
This project builds on Vodafone’s agreement with Openreach last month to bring fibre to 0.5 million households in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool, in addition to the 12 towns and cities already under construction with CityFibre. These full-fibre programmes, together with Vodafone’s expanding 5G network, support its strategy to offer customers the best converged fixed and mobile services.
Vodafone UK Chief Executive Officer Nick Jeffery said: “Vodafone is in a unique position to drive forward full-fibre deployment in the UK. By offering our partners a ready market in the form of Vodafone Gigafast Broadband, we played an instrumental role in encouraging Openreach’s new wholesale service to build in additional places, and now we are enabling CityFibre to expand. The only way the UK will achieve its digital ambition is through strong partnerships, and Vodafone is leading the way.”
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Note to Editors
Vodafone Gigafast Broadband is already available in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Coventry, Huddersfield, Milton Keynes, Leeds, Peterborough, Southend-on-Sea and Stirling. Aside from Salisbury, Vodafone will also bring its full-fibre service to small businesses and households in Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Northampton during 2020.
Summary of revised terms:
- Vodafone retains exclusivity on a rolling 12-month basis for the first phase of CityFibre’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) roll out covering one million homes.
- The addition of other anchor tenants for CityFibre strengthens its ability to provide wholesale competition to Openreach and encourages faster deployment of FTTP networks.
- Overall, these agreements with CityFibre and Openreach will help to accelerate FTTP roll out in the UK, increase wholesale infrastructure competition and strengthen Vodafone’s ability to compete in the retail market with improved commercial terms.
For more information, please contact:
Vodafone UK Media Relations Team
Tel: 01635 693693
Email: ukmediarelations@vodafone.com
Website: https://newscentre.vodafone.co.uk
