Construction has started following extensive planning and design work, with the first locations in the county receive the new digital infrastructure including Fen Ditton, Grantchester and Milton. CityFibre will also be connecting a further 170,000 homes across Cambridgeshire as it aligns its nationwide rollout with the Project Gigabit programme.
The Cambridgeshire rollout - made possible through £69 million government investment - is the first of nine Project Gigabit delivery contracts secured by CityFibre since March 2022 with rollouts spanning Suffolk, Norfolk, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Kent, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes. These account for more than £782 million in government subsidies and unlock almost £1.2 billion in combined public and private investment in rural broadband.
Lucy Frazer, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and MP for South East Cambridgeshire, today visited engineers deploying the new network in her constituency.
She said, "I'm delighted to see that CityFibre have started their full fibre rollout as part of Project Gigabit here in Cambridgeshire. This future-proof connectivity is critical for our region to drive growth expand job opportunities and connect our communities.
"I have consistently been pressing for greater connectivity in South East Cambridgeshire, since even before I was elected. At every stage I have pressed to ensure that Cambridgeshire is first in the queue for any rollout. As the project gets underway, it has been great to see first-hand the progress already made here in Fen Ditton, and to understand how this technology has been designed to ensure it will be fit for decades to come.
"As some of the first in the country to benefit from the Government's £5bn programme of investment in new lightning-fast connectivity, I'm pleased that the first households and businesses in South East Cambridgeshire will shortly be able to access services and reap the benefits of this brand-new network. Gigabit will also be coming very shortly to Milton and Landbeach."
The new network will provide residents and businesses with access to a wide range of ISPs including brands such as Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen, as well as several new providers.
Built using gold-standard XGS-PON technology, capable of supporting speeds of up to 10Gbps, CityFibre’s full fibre network will enable its current and future ISP partners to serve customers with far faster and more reliable broadband services than the legacy copper-based network currently available in the build areas.
Data and Digital Infrastructure Minister, Julia Lopez, said, "Our multi-million pound investment in Project Gigabit is putting an end to buffering and bad connections. We are rolling out gigabit-capable networks faster than any other country in Europe, driving forward growth and new opportunities by providing millions of people across the UK with access to game-changing connectivity.
"It's fantastic to see that Cambridgeshire will be one of the first places in the UK to see spades in the ground, transforming the way people live and work in these rural communities."
Throughout the build, CityFibre will work closely with local stakeholders to ensure disruption is minimised and that the build is managed safely and efficiently. Typically, teams will only remain in each road for up to three days at a time, and residents will be contacted ahead of any work starting.
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said, "Our brand new network will go a long way to addressing the digital divide between our towns and cities and those in the countryside. There are real benefits to be felt from multi-gigabit speeds and unparalleled reliability and these are just as important to people living and working in rural areas. For the first time, underserved communities can choose between an old copper network built for phone calls and a modern full fibre network designed for the data age."