14 December 2015

The physical assets comprise 1,100km of duct and fibre in 24 cities, as well as a 1,100km national long distance network.

CityFibre has bought KCOM’s national fibre and duct network assets in a deal worth £90 million. 

The company has secured £180 million of investment which it will use to finance the deal as well as continue to commercialise its national network. 

The acquisition of KCOM’s national communications infrastructure assets comprise 1,100km of duct and fibre network in 24 UK cities, as well as a 1,100km national long distance network that connects these cities to major data centres across the country and to internet peering points in London. 

The deal excludes KCOM's infrastructure in Hull and East Yorkshire which means the group's Hull and East Riding internet services will be unaffected. According to reports, KCOM's rollout of its Lightstream fibre optic broadband service will carry on as planned, no jobs will be lost, and the firm will continue offering the same business services in the region as before.

CityFibre says the acquisition immediately increases the number of its metro footprints to 36 cities, and will enable it to target a total of 50 cities by 2020, reaching 20 per cent of the market.

The company claims it is now the UK’s largest wholesale infrastructure provider after BT, and the first challenger to the national incumbent nearly 10 years to the day since the formation of BT Openreach.

On completion of the transaction next month, CityFibre’s expanded footprint will support more than 7,000 mobile cell sites, 24,500 public sector sites, and 245,000 businesses. 

Furthermore, the firm says it will be in a position to enable gigabit speed, ultrafast broadband to support FTTH deployments to 3.5 million homes. 

The company plans to accelerate commercialisation of its wholesale fibre networks through its growing portfolio of service provider partners, including KCOM which will now have access to a full national footprint. 

CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch reckons this is the “most significant event” to take place in the UK’s digital infrastructure market in a decade.

“This is the most significant event to take place in the UK’s digital infrastructure market in a decade,” says CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch.

“The UK now has a secure independent infrastructure alternative. Cities, service providers, mobile operators and investors have boldly embraced a new model of future-proof infrastructure provision and paved the way for its acceleration across the country.”

CityFibre designs, builds, owns, and operates fibre optic network infrastructure. The firm claims it is the largest independent wholesale provider of fibre infrastructure to mid-sized cities and major towns across the UK.

This latest acquisition builds upon its ambitious ‘Gigabit City’ projects which have so far been launched in York, Peterborough, Coventry, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow (see p3, Dec 2015 issue).

The company also claims to have deployed the UK’s first fibre-to-the-tower network. Based on dark fibre, this was implemented in Kingston-upon-Hull under a national framework agreement with MBNL (Mobile Broadband Network Ltd is an infrastructure firm jointly owned by EE and Three UK). 

In addition, CityFibre has worked with Sky and TalkTalk on an FTTH network in York, and has a master services agreement with Vodafone.