Vodafone UK recently announced plans to accelerate the roll out of full-fibre broadband in the UK by restructuring its existing deal with CityFibre.
With full-fibre broadband still only available to around 11% of UK premises, Vodafone is working with infrastructure companies such as CityFibre and Openreach to speed up its delivery. Vodafone is doing this by offering customers broadband download and upload speeds of up to 900Mbps through its Vodafone Gigafast Broadband service.
Under the new agreement with CityFibre, Vodafone will offer Vodafone Gigafast Broadband on a rolling, 12-month exclusive basis as homes become available for service in each of the 12 towns and cities covered in phase one of the deployment. Previously, the period of exclusivity was dependent on the total time taken to roll out the network in each city.
The amended commercial terms agreed with CityFibre, for both the initial 12 towns and cities and additional locations, will enable Vodafone to make the Vodafone Gigafast Broadband service available in new locations and to many more customers.
In addition, Vodafone is backing a new trial in Salisbury in which Openreach will replace every copper-based telephone line within the catchment area with superior and more reliable optical fibre cables.
Nick Jeffery, CEO, Vodafone UK
By offering our partners a ready market in the form of Vodafone Gigafast Broadband, we played an instrumental role in encouraging Openreach’s new wholesale service to build in additional places, and now we are enabling CityFibre to expand.
