Newbury headquartered Vodafone to become Britain’s largest full-fibre broadband provider

By Nicky Godding

15 November 2021

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Vodafone is set to become Britain’s largest full fibre broadband provider following a deal signed with CityFibre. Vodafone says it will offer full fibre to more homes than any other provider thanks to investing in partnerships with both Openreach and CityFibre. By spring 2022, Vodafone has a target of making its full fibre services available to more than eight million homes.

The deal establishes Vodafone as CityFibre’s anchor customer, making long-term, volume commitments across CityFibre’s entire eight million home rollout as part of their £4bn investment programme. The rollout will deploy dense full fibre infrastructure in 285 cities, towns and villages across the country by 2025, and support the construction of a new national access network which will make it easier and faster for Vodafone to bring their full fibre services to market.

The deal builds on a partnership agreed in November 2017 in which Vodafone committed to market ultrafast consumer broadband services across a one million home CityFibre footprint in 12 cities.

Max Taylor, Consumer Director at Vodafone UK, said: “Consumers need competition in the broadband space, and we’re committed to delivering that. Our partnership approach allows us to bring full fibre to more homes than any other provider, ensuring families have more choice and more competitive pricing than ever before. We’re set to become Britain’s largest full fibre provider, and we’re making the fastest broadband, with a premium package of features and benefits, even more accessible than ever with this great new offer.”

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive at CityFibre, said: “Through our strategic partnership, Vodafone has made a powerful decision to back CityFibre and help establish wholesale infrastructure competition for the UK. Thanks in large part to its continued support, CityFibre has now emerged as the nation’s leading independent Full Fibre platform, with the best wholesale products, attractive economics and a network scaling rapidly across the UK. We’re delighted that Vodafone continues to have full confidence in our network and is now anchoring our entire Full Fibre rollout nationwide.”

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.