CityFibre has announced a project under which it will construct an ‘ultra-fast, pure fibre network’ in the city of Glasgow in partnership with Scottish ISP HighNet, in a move which it says will create Scotland’s ‘third Gigabit City’. CityFibre and HighNet, the latter of which focuses on offering services to the business sector, will reportedly begin the infrastructure deployment in Glasgow city centre early in 2016, with the intention of ultimately delivering pure fibre connectivity to the whole city. With the first phase of deployment to comprise a dense network build in the city centre, amongst the first businesses to benefit will be HighNet’s channel partner’s customers. Up to 7,000 city centre businesses are expected to be within ‘close reach’ of the fibre network within the year, before ultimately some 15,000 businesses will have access to it once the rollout is complete.
Similarly to CityFibre’s other Gigabit City projects in Aberdeen, Coventry, Edinburgh, Peterborough and York, the infrastructure will be deployed in line with the company’s ‘Well Planned City’ model. According to the company, this design approach ‘accommodates current and future capacity requirements from the business community, public sector, mobile operators and datacentre providers’.
Commenting on the plans, Greg Mesch, CityFibre CEO said: ‘This announcement marks our third Gigabit City project in Scotland, and upon its completion, CityFibre will have an established network presence in Scotland’s four largest cities, making us the largest wholesale fibre infrastructure provider in the country after BT Openreach.’