UK-based pure fibre infrastructure provider CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings has announced the completion of the first phase of construction of a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network in the City of York, which it is building as part of a joint venture with alternative broadband providers Sky and TalkTalk. With the first phase said to have focused on enabling the JV partners to validate key network design principles, engineering processes and deployment economics, ‘encouraging results’ mean that the companies involved have now approved the next deployment phase, which will reportedly accelerate and increase the scale of the project, bringing gigabit speed connectivity to thousands more properties in York.

Greg Mesch, CityFibre CEO, was cited as saying of the work that has been carried out: ‘We are really pleased with what we have accomplished so far. As a team, Sky, TalkTalk and CityFibre have validated a network design for true ultra-fast fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) for residents and fibre-to-the premises (FTTP) for business users. This next phase will accelerate the deployment and will further help to determine the scalability of the infrastructure. Without the bottlenecks that exist in traditional networks, an ultra-fast fibre infrastructure will future-proof a city, offering superior quality of service and higher speeds as demand for bandwidth increases.’