News & Opinion

As the UK gently eases itself out of lockdown and with more businesses taking a hybrid approach to home and office working, what will the impact be on connectivity and bandwidth. Paul North, Head of Regional Sales at CityFibre considers the possibilities.

As the past year has demonstrated, it has been possible for most businesses to operate successfully with staff working from home. But what happens when lockdown restrictions begin to ease and offices potentially open back up? The reliance on reliable connectivity and good quality video conferencing tools has soared and their use has become second nature now to many of us. So, is there cause for businesses to adopt a permanent working from home culture? Or is a new hybrid approach more realistic?

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent Full Fibre platform, has appointed CloudConnX as a City Champion for Eastbourne as part of a full fibre roll out that is set to open up new game changing connectivity services to businesses in the town.

As a City Champion, CloudConnX will have the opportunity to offer the unrivalled speed, reliability, and value of CityFibre’s full fibre to business customers in Eastbourne as the brand new network in the town is lit up in 2021, part of an up to £4bn national investment to reach up to 8 million homes and businesses across the UK by 2025.

With an open access network set to reach up to 8 million premises, CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has opened its doors to ISPs across the UK to build on their success with residential full fibre broadband. Head of Sales for Consumer ISPs, Emma Goodwin, discusses what opportunities await traditionally business-focused ISPs looking for new growth.  

Responsible for attracting, enabling and supporting ISPs in taking CityFibre services to market, Goodwin believes there is a fantastic opportunity, especially for those partners that have, up to now, focused on serving businesses and are looking to broaden their horizons and enter a new market. 

“We’re already moving fast but we want to move even faster” said Goodwin. ”Our build programme is progressing swiftly and that’s really exciting. Typically, we will reach almost every premise in each of the towns and cities we’re building in, so there is every reason for our ISP partners to offer and provide full fibre services to consumers.”  

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, is supporting wholesale partners and their business customers as they return to their offices and/or adopt new hybrid working practices, by making its popular Ethernet Flex solution even more flexible with a new six-month promotion.  

The upcoming return to the office and an increase in the adoption of hybrid working practices has left many businesses uncertain of their immediate bandwidth requirements as they reassess the rapidly evolving needs of their staff and organisation. Whilst that makes this the perfect time to evaluate their current connectivity needs, committing to new long-term connectivity contracts can potentially be daunting due to the current economic climate and ongoing pandemic uncertainty. 

That’s why CityFibre have launched a new six-month promotion, providing even more flexibility across its Ethernet Flex solution.  

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has strengthened its commitment to delivering a superior customer experience with the appointment of comms industry veteran, Matt Walker as its new Director of Customer Delivery and Assurance.

With over 20 years of experience in the industry, previously holding roles such as Director of Customer Service for consumer business at Openreach and senior roles in Group Strategy at BT Technology, Matt brings a wealth of customer service knowledge and experience to his new position.

When asked what attracted him to CityFibre, he said: “CityFibre is a really exciting and vibrant company that is not only committed to the delivery of full fibre services across the UK, but is also committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Windsor Telecom, a company focused on making technology easy and enjoyable for businesses of all sizes, is excited to focus on delivering the benefits of CityFibre’s full fibre services to businesses in Reading, Maidenhead, Slough and Bracknell.

CityFibre, the UK’s third national digital infrastructure platform, has appointed Windsor Telecom as a City Champion for Reading, Maidenhead, Slough, and Bracknell – continuing its commitment to driving the full fibre message out to as many businesses as possible in the region.

For Windsor Telecom, the agreement provides the opportunity to offer the fast speeds and reliability of full fibre to its customers at an attractive price; a proposition that companies in these four economically-strong areas will welcome.

CityFibre, the UK’s third national digital infrastructure platform, continues to expand the opportunity for channel partners by opening up access to its full fibre Ethernet services for businesses in Derby. 

This is further great news in Derby’s exciting digital revolution. It follows the announcement in June 2020 that CityFibre is investing £45m into its state-of-the-art full fibre network in the city, part of a wider up to £4bn investment to bring full fibre to up to eight million UK homes, largely by 2025. 

According to research from economic consultancy Regeneris, full fibre connectivity will have a major impact in Derby over the next 15 years. Access to full fibre could unlock £39m in business productivity and innovation, while a further £21m in growth could be driven from new business start-ups, with enhanced connectivity making it easier and less expensive to set up base and run efficiently. 

The UK’s third digital infrastructure platform, CityFibre, and leading wholesale-only network provider Virtual1 have jointly announced a collaborative partnership to serve the UK connectivity channel with full fibre business services.

Through the partnership, Virtual1 is enabling its partners to access CityFibre’s differentiated business Ethernet infrastructure in its full fibre towns and cities across the UK from February; while CityFibre leverages Virtual1’s national network to deliver fibre options beyond its own full fibre footprint to provide ‘off-net’ choice to its partners.

Virtual1 has interconnected with CityFibre to leverage its network and enable 600+ channel partners to serve their business customers with a portfolio of 100Mbps to 1Gbps full fibre Ethernet products in 28 cities, expanding further as CityFibre continues its UK wide rollout.

There’s no doubt that 2020 has been a year that none of us will forget. We started the year with almost biblical storms and flooding, followed by a worldwide pandemic which saw the UK effectively ‘shut down’ for most of the spring and summer, followed by further regional restrictions and a second lockdown in November. What a year! 

But if lockdown and a request from the Government to ‘work from home where you can’ has taught us anything, it’s that there has never been a greater need for a full fibre infrastructure in the UK to serve homes and businesses.  

Looking back at the early months of 2020 when the pandemic first took hold, infrastructure builders were asked by the government to continue to build, as they recognised the essential role full fibre connectivity will play in the UK’s economic recovery. Our key workers kept breaking ground and carried on connecting people, continuing our mission to reach 8 million premises across over 100 towns and cities across the UK by 2025, by investing £4billion.  

Joining a new business in the midst of a pandemic – a daunting thought you might think?  

Actually, for me it has been an exciting step as I joined CityFibre in September in a business development role having worked for several leading ISPs and MSPs over the last decade. The new challenge excites me because I believe despite the obvious current challenges to businesses, the scale of opportunity has never been greater for proactive and passionate CityFibre partners and the customers they serve. 

There is a real opportunity to be part of something truly transformational for this country because CityFibre, as the UK’s third national digital infrastructure platform, is looking for true champions of full fibre to work with us and deliver futureproof Gigabit speed connectivity to businesses across the UK, services that are critical to the flexible ways of working needed in the wake of COVID-19 and which will inevitably play a huge role in shaping our country’s economic recovery.