CityFibre and Gigaclear to accelerate ultrafast speeds in rural areas

CityFibre, the UK’s alternative digital infrastructure provider, has formed a strategic partnership with Gigaclear, the leading provider of ultrafast pure fibre broadband services to rural areas. The agreement will help to dramatically accelerate the roll-out of next generation ultrafast internet access to hundreds of thousands of rural homes and businesses across the UK.

With extensive metro fibre networks in over 37 towns and cities and over 1,100km of long distance network, CityFibre’s national footprint will be used to facilitate and accelerate Gigaclear’s deployment of rural pure fibre networks. CityFibre’s long distance network will provide a new backhaul option for future Gigaclear deployments while its metro networks and POP facilities will facilitate connectivity to nearby rural areas.

In recent months both Gigaclear and CityFibre have raised substantial new investment from an extensive and highly regarded portfolio of investors demonstrating the market’s confidence in the need for alternative network infrastructure providers to deploy fit for purpose connectivity to public and private sectors and consumers.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive of CityFibre said: “We are delighted to formalise a partnership with Gigaclear which shares such a complementary agenda. We have long been aware of the huge levels of demand for better internet connectivity in rural areas surrounding our urban network projects. It is a national embarrassment that residents and businesses in rural areas, and indeed many of those in towns and cities, have been left in the digital dark ages. Pure fibre infrastructure is the 21st century utility and is an essential component to everyday life.”

Matthew Hare, Chief Executive at Gigaclear said: “Bringing brilliant broadband to rural Britain has its challenges. This partnership with CityFibre gives Gigaclear access to more capacity, faster delivery and more flexible bandwidth across the country. It helps us build Gigabit networks where other operators do not reach, to meet the demand for better broadband from homes and businesses.”