26 September 2014

York’s Shambles to get up to speed with gigabit fibre.

CityFibre, Sky and TalkTalk’s joint venture to build gigabit networks in the UK’s major cities outside London has chosen Fujitsu Telecom to build the first phase of York’s fibre to the premises network.

A Fujitsu spokesperson says the firm is working on a three month testing period but expects around 20,000 properties to be connected by the end of 2015.

Fujitsu will undertake all of the build activities including detailed network planning, civil and network construction, testing and interconnection of the FTTP network.

“Network planning is well advanced and the first technology and construction activities aimed at optimising deployment speed, cost and quality are starting in late October,” says the spokesperson. 

A statement from the joint venture says Fujitsu was selected for its in-depth knowledge and experience of delivering networks for Tier 1 operators in the UK and abroad as well as its ability to build networks at scale. 

The move should result in businesses and consumers gaining access to very high speed broadband at prices well below what BT might charge.

Fujitsu worked with Sky and TalkTalk in 2011 on a pilot next-generation broadband rollout in the Wirral. This relied on BT’s copper to deliver the final drop and enabled 100Mbps downloads and 22Mbps uploads. However, this was not pursued because of BT’s intransigence over physical infrastructure access (PIA) charges to its poles and ducts, etc. 

In 2011, Fujitsu joined with Virgin Media, Sky and TalkTalk to complain to Ofcom that BT’s charges were about five times higher than costs. It told Ofcom that BT’s PIA prices were “well in excess” of efficiently incurred costs. The vendor added that since Openreach also competes in downstream markets through Generic Ethernet Access, it faces strong commercial incentives to maintain PIA prices at this high level.