Sky/TalkTalk/CityFibre in York

TalkTalk and Sky are teaming up with CityFibre, initially in York, to provide 1Gbps FTTH completely independent of BT Openreach .

CityFibre news.
thinkbroadband news.

Numerous newspaper reports on Google.

What really annoys me is that my nephew has just moved to York a couple of months back - how unfair he should get the option of gigabit broadband when I am languishing on just 40Mb/s... Knowing him though he will get bored working in the store he is in and move somewhere else just before they rollout.



Just to be clear, this is tongue in cheek and not meant to wind up all those people who can't get fibre and have dreadful broadband speeds and stability.

Around half or more of York has option of 152 Mbps from Virgin.
It is also seeing a chunk of BDUK work to fix EO lines and this includes FTTP as well as some commercial FTTP.
So some might see three options in a years time.

Personally am not going to get too excited until they have people with speed tests popping up and the Sky and TalkTalk websites list it as an option.

For the £5 million investment from both retailers, it could be said that the leverage this investment gives them when negotiating with Openreach and Ofcom is worth the money.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

TalkTalk and Sky are teaming up with CityFibre, initially in York, to provide 1Gbps FTTH completely independent of BT Openreach .

CityFibre news.
thinkbroadband news.

Numerous newspaper reports on Google.

Let us see how far they actually get with it. How soon will it be before they realise they have totally under-budgeted? Remember the cable companies that finally became Virgin Media and their promises before the actual cost forced them to scale back.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

For the £5 million investment from both retailers, it could be said that the leverage this investment gives them when negotiating with Openreach and Ofcom is worth the money.

They've made noises about SLU and PIA in the past so they definitely have something in mind. I suspect they are just trying to turn the screws and make BT improve their access pricing. Presumably BT will do almost anything to protect the value of its local loop.

Though there is a counter idea, if Openreach loses a lot of its 'wholesale' revenue BT could make distinct overtures for the equivalence to be watered down so a more vertically integrated BT Retail Infinity service was possible, at the expense of the smaller operators who only represent 3 to 6% of the market (6% includes EE)

If CityFIbre sticks to the sort of areas that have Virgin Media and all indications are, then will do little for average speeds, unless they can retail Gigabit for £25 per month and no line rental and also offer slower options that fit the existing TalkTalk./Sky price points for up to 16 Mbps services.

I look forward to the full postcode level roll-out plans that we are sure to get

I think CityFibre have it reasonably well costed, which will be why Sky and TT have chosen them as the installer. There's more detail in this article. I think a lot of the cable for this pilot is already in place.

So what is the investment per property passed?

It is nice to see head on competition with BT.

The article I linked to says it will connect to 20,000 properties. Five million divided by 20,000 is £250.

If these guys really want to make a statement then they need to push beyond 1Gbps. A 2Gbps DL / 1Gbps UL 'NURO' service is already available in Japan through So-net for the equivalent of a $500 installation fee (currently being waived) and $50 p/m with a two-year contract, and Patrick Pichette has talked about Google Fiber launching a 10Gbps tier in three years' time. It'll be interesting to see how much dearer that will be than the current pricing of no construction fee and $70 p/m with a one-year contract.