CityFibre announces £500m investment in fibre broadband
CityFibre Holdings has announced plans to roll out super-fast broadband infrastructure to one million more homes and tens of thousands of businesses across the UK.
The company has appointed corporate finance specialist Macquarie Capital to offer guidance on the project, which it hopes to achieve courtesy of an investment of up to £500 million.
Under the proposal, CityFibre is set to install fibre-to-the-premises networks in several towns and cities, providing properties with broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps.
As well as the one million households that will benefit from the work, the telecoms infrastructure firm will roll out its ultra-fast broadband service to 50,000 businesses.
CityFibre said the project will help the UK government's goal of achieving the best super-fast broadband network in Europe by 2015 - a target that currently looks some way off, as Akamai figures published last month claimed Britain ranks 26th in the world in terms of broadband connectivity.
To deliver the infrastructure, the company intends to partner with technology vendors, construction firms and internet service providers. It believes the rollout will create thousands of jobs across the country.
Chief executive of CityFibre Greg Mesch said he is "delighted" to be teaming up with Macquarie, an institution that he said possesses "deep knowledge" of financing infrastructure projects.
"CityFibre looks forward to engaging with local authorities and business across the country to deliver new fibre networks that can power the next generation of public services and cloud-based business networks," he remarked.
Bill Kennish, head of telecommunications, media entertainment and technology at Macquarie Capital in Europe, added: "We look forward to bringing our extensive telecoms infrastructure financing experience to CityFibre as it takes the next steps in its development."
The news comes just a matter of days after the company announced the completion of a project to connect more than 100 council buildings in York to a dark fibre optic network.
