Northampton set to become the UK’s next Gigabit City
Northampton is earmarked as the next Gigabit City in the UK after CityFibre announced plans to provide 1Gbps fibre broadband to local businesses.
The new network will use 45 km of fibre, and CityFibre will sell its services to third-party broadband providers. The company is currently working in Northampton alongside dbfb, a company that it is also already working with in Milton Keynes. The project is set to help the county council reach full superfast broadband coverage by the end of next year as well as provide support to new businesses in the area.
Paul Griffiths of the Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce said that a top-quality Internet connection will have a positive impact on the chances of local businesses to achieve success.
CityFibre is currently operating around 40 UK networks, and last year, it purchased the national fibre infrastructure of KCOM for an impressive £90 million. Much of its work involves building networks for local councils that function as tenants before increasing its reach to both residential and business users, who can then take advantage of third-party 1Gbps broadband.
The CEO of CityFibre, Greg Mesch, said that the Northamptonshire council has proved its commitment to the provision of faster broadband, and this project will give local companies “a huge digital head start on the competition,” although networks of this kind will soon be the norm.
The company has recently agreed to a tie-up with Gigaclear, a rural provider, and it has just added Reading to its list of Gigabit Cities.