• Five new Project Gigabit contracts awarded to CityFibre totalling over £394m.
• Awards will subsidise full fibre rollout to over 202,000 hard to reach homes and businesses across rural Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Kent, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes.
• CityFibre will connect almost 450,000 additional premises on a commercial basis as it optimises its nationwide rollout programme to accommodate Project Gigabit.
• CityFibre has been awarded a total of nine Project Gigabit contracts to date, worth £782m in subsidies and unlocking almost £1.2bn combined public and private investment in rural broadband.

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has been awarded five new contracts under the government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme. These will subsidise the rollout of full fibre infrastructure to over 202,000 rural properties in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Kent, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes, that would otherwise be excluded from commercial rollouts.

The five new contracts, awarded under a competitive public procurement process, total over £394m of government subsidy. In line with its strategy, CityFibre will continue to expand and densify its significant existing network footprint in these areas alongside Project Gigabit, extending its rollout to almost 450,000 additional premises across the awarded regions within its 8m rollout programme, bringing the total premises benefiting from the new awards to around 651,000. Detailed planning will begin immediately with the first premises expected to be connected in early 2025.

CityFibre is already delivering Project Gigabit contracts in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Hampshire. Alongside the latest contracts, this represents over £782m in government subsidies and unlocks almost £1.2bn in combined public and private investment in rural broadband.

With Project Gigabit subsidies targeted at locations not addressed by commercial build plans, CityFibre will be the only full fibre network available to those homes and businesses and to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that serve them.

Built using gold-standard XGS-PON technology, capable of supporting speeds of up to 10Gbps, CityFibre’s full fibre network will enable its current and future ISP partners to serve customers with far faster and more reliable broadband services than legacy copper-based networks.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre, said: “We’re thrilled to be a key delivery partner for the government on this critical infrastructure project, transforming the digital capabilities of rural homes and businesses across the country. But that’s just the start. We’re continuing to expand our commercial rollout alongside Project Gigabit, extending infrastructure choice, multi-gigabit speeds, and unparalleled reliability to hundreds of thousands of additional premises in these regions.”

Data and Digital Infrastructure Minister Julia Lopez said: “We’re wasting no time in our mission to bring lightning-fast broadband to rural areas - with a billion pounds in contracts already signed with broadband companies to get our next-generation network up and running.

“Project Gigabit is already driving growth, creating jobs and putting an end to snail’s pace internet speeds, and we will continue to work rapidly to ensure people feel the benefits of our rollout to even more places across the UK as quickly as possible.”