CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent Full Fibre platform and only carrier-neutral operator, has today announced a further equity commitment of £300m from its existing shareholder, Mubadala Investment Company. This equity investment will support CityFibre’s accelerated growth plans and enable participation in Building Digital UK’s (BDUK) ‘Project Gigabit’ rural programme.

Under the infrastructure vertical of the UAE–UK Sovereign Investment Partnership, the new equity commitment builds on Mubadala’s initial £500m investment into CityFibre as part of a wider financing in September 2021. The financing saw Mubadala and Interogo Holding join existing investors Antin Infrastructure Partners and the Infrastructure business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Combined, these investments now bring the total raised by CityFibre in the last six months to £1.425bn, the largest ever financing for UK Full Fibre deployment.

As the UK’s sole wholesale-only, carrier-neutral operator, CityFibre provides consumer and business Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners, service integrators and mobile operators access to world-class Full Fibre infrastructure.

CityFibre is currently engaged in a £4bn investment programme to roll-out dense Full Fibre infrastructure to up to 8m homes by 2025. This rollout continues to accelerate with deployments underway across more than 60 major metro areas, spanning 285 cities, towns and villages.

CityFibre is already the largest provider of Full Fibre in 26 cities and its rollout has now passed 1.5m homes. In addition, 1.3m of the homes passed across 60 cities are Ready For Service, enabling residents to get connected in as little as 5 working days. Residents can choose Gigabit-capable, symmetrical services from a growing number of its consumer Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners including Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen as well as over 30 independent ISPs across the UK.

CityFibre’s new ‘city-wide’ networks are designed to underpin the digital requirements of all market verticals including public sector and business, as well as enabling the rollout of 5G services and other Smart City initiatives. The future-proof digital infrastructure is already helping to unlock economic growth across the country and will support the Government’s levelling up agenda.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive at CityFibre said: “Mubadala’s confidence in our business is testament to our growing momentum and progress. The need and appetite for carrier-neutral wholesale network competition at scale is clear, and CityFibre continues to demonstrate the benefits as a driver of wider investment, improved services and better value. With Mubadala’s continued support, we are well funded to deliver the UK’s finest Full Fibre network and help to level-up the UK.”