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Ultrafast broadband from CityFibre to transform Peterborough into a gigabit city

Peterborough firms and families will be able to tap into ultrafast fibre broadband delivering speeds of up to 1Gbps thanks to a deal done with ISP CityFibre. 

The Gigabit City project, announced last month, will kick off in Spring 2014 and the first phase is estimated to take 18 months. The first part of the upgrade will see the commercial districts of Peterborough connected first, with over 4,000 companies getting connected. Eventually, over 60,000 homes across Peterborough will be connected. 

Greg Mesch, chief executive officer at CityFibre said: “This is a major step forward in our objective to deliver Gigabit cities that can provide businesses and consumers with the huge benefits of ultra-fast broadband connectivity. 

Ultrafast broadband from CityFibre to transform Peterborough into a gigabit city

“The scale of our plans and the strategic partnership with Peterborough City Council will enable us to deploy an infrastructure that can create jobs, boost the productivity of existing businesses and attract new companies into the city.” 

As well as letting companies and families connected to gigabit broadband speeds, the rollout will also benefit schools, hospitals, data centres and will let mobile networks who need fibre base-stations rollout and improve 4G coverage throughout Peterborough. 

CityFibre has also installed similar networks in Bournemouth and York and is looking at launching services in other UK cities. CityFibre’s FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) connections will provide speeds of up to 1Gbps (1000Mbps), compared to the current top speeds of the FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet)-type connections (80Mbps) currently being deployed by BT and the coaxial cable broadband offered by Virgin Media (120Mbps). 

Both BT and Virgin Media are trialling technologies that will allow for faster speeds, and Virgin plans to launch a 152Mbps service next year. In 18 months time we could be seeing 1Gbps speeds delivered on these networks, depending on how trials with technologies such as G.fast and DOCSIS 3.1 go. 

Image: Rosham Nikam/Flickr

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