Nottingham and Wolverhampton, as well as smaller towns in the Midlands, such as Solihull, are to benefit from CityFibre gigabit broadband network.

CityFibre has added 36 UK towns and cities to its plans for its 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband network, bringing the total to 62.  The company intends to cover eight million premises with FTTH by around 2025.

CityFibre will work with ISPs Vodafone and TalkTalk, among others, to market services to consumers and businesses. Mobile operator Three UK, meanwhile, will also use the CityFibre network to support its nationwide roll-out of 5G network services.

The company says that it will award £1.5 billion in construction contracts by July and will bring forward its build-out plans to start work “in the vast majority of these towns and cities” by the end of the year. The roll-out will create more than 5,000 construction jobs, the company claims, and stimulate economic growth or around £85 billion.

“We want to make sure every corner of the country benefits from world-class, gigabit speed broadband, so it is great to see CityFibre expanding out into 36 more towns and cities,” said secretary of state for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden MP.

He continued: “We are working closely with industry to push ahead with nationwide rollout and investing £5 billion so the hardest-to-reach areas aren’t left behind.”

The cooperation with TalkTalk follows on from the January 2020 acquisition of the ISP’s FibreNation fibre network in a £200 million deal. Instead of investing the £1.5 billion required to grow FibreNation’s network to critical mass, the company decided to offload it and provide ultra-fast broadband to customers via CityFibre and BT networks.

Vodafone, meanwhile, enjoyed an exclusivity agreement with CityFibre, a deal that was loosened at the same time. CityFibre’s network has been behind Vodafone’s Gigafast Broadband network, which is available across 11 towns and cities where CityFibre has built-out an existing network.