Oct 30 2013
People living and working in Peterborough are set to benefit from a city-wide, pure fibre-optic network, delivering Gigabit connectivity speeds. This brand new infrastructure will be paid for by a wholly private investment into Peterborough of up to £30 million by CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent fibre optic infrastructure provider to smaller cities and towns.
A Gigabit city provides local businesses, carriers, ISPs and the public sector with access to a future proof fibre infrastructure that will deliver substantial bandwidth capacity, an ultrafast user experience and significant cost and service advantages.
CityFibre is currently considering investment to create Gigabit cities in a number of locations across the UK. Peterborough has been identified to be part of CityFibre’s Gigabit cities vision due to its attractive high growth business, residential and public sector markets as well as its progressive, ambitious local authority. Peterborough is one of UK’s fastest growing cities with a record 1400 SMEs launched in 2012.
As a Gigabit City the community in Peterborough will gain dramatic social and economic benefits. The fibre network will see internet connections offering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second, approximately 40 times faster than current superfast broadband. This will enable schools to increase educational standards, the local government to realise efficiencies and improve public services and businesses to thrive through technological advantage.
CityFibre will be implementing the metro network to its own high capacity specification. The company will initially invest in over 90km of fibre infrastructure, ensuring the new network passes 80% of Peterborough’s businesses.
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre commented: “Cities, like Peterborough, should have the opportunity to benefit from widespread deployment of fibre infrastructure. This will enable businesses and homes in the city to fully maximise the power of cloud computing, ultrafast broadband, or even glitch-free video conferencing on Google Hangouts or Skype. The first stage of our deployment will include the major commercial districts of the city, covering over 4,000 businesses, all of whom will benefit from gigabit level speeds and services. The second phase will bring that same level of speed to up to 60,000 homes, making Peterborough truly a Gigabit city. We welcome Peterborough to the Gigabit city club.”
Peterborough city council has developed a Strategic Partnership with CityFibre to provide a framework to meet the council’s strategic objectives in the delivery of Gigabit speed services.
“Peterborough will soon have one of the fastest networks available in the UK and will be on its way to becoming a Gigabit City, which is another boost to the city’s growth agenda,” said Councillor Marco Cereste, Leader of Peterborough City Council. “We therefore welcome the proposed CityFibre investment in the city. Peterborough’s economy is rapidly growing and the CityFibre investment will allow businesses of all sizes to utilise the Internet for growth, as well as bringing new business to Peterborough, inspire new start-ups, support homeworkers and create jobs.”