Vodafone, CityFibre extend partnership to include Ethernet services

After becoming the UK’s third-largest domestic fibre infrastructure provider, CityFibre is joining forces with current technology partner Vodafone to enable businesses in 12 towns and cities across the country to address business networking use cases.

The new agreement builds on the companies’ existing partnership and will see businesses offered more choice on a tailored private data network over single or multiple premises. Vodafone 1Gbps and 100Mbps Ethernet services are available on CityFibre’s optical infrastructure in Cambridge, Coventry and Peterborough, and Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Leeds, Leicester, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Portsmouth and Southend-on-Sea are set to follow.

Vodafone UK currently uses CityFibre FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) infrastructure to deliver its full-fibre broadband service and sees the new partnership as allowing Ethernet infrastructure to offer more local access options than ever before. Vodafone’s Ethernet services offer businesses of all sizes their own secure, private data network connection, enabling multiple sites to be linked together. 

“We already have an extremely successful partnership with CityFibre, so we are delighted to be able to extend this to include Ethernet services,” said Vishal Dixit, strategy and wholesale director of Vodafone UK. “It’s never been more important to ensure our business customers have as much choice as possible, as well as the high-speed and high-quality data service they need to run their business successfully.”

CityFibre chief commercial officer Rob Hamlin added: “We’re delighted to be widening our strategic partnership with Vodafone, enabling them to offer innovative and market-leading Ethernet services over our full-fibre networks. With businesses’ need for reliable, gigabit speed connectivity only set to increase, our world-class networks will reach 30% of the market in the coming years.”

Separately, CityFibre is in partnership with Vodafone to supply FTTP infrastructure for Vodafone’s full-fibre broadband service, including Vodafone Pro Broadband, which offers consumers so-called “unbreakable” broadband at “unbeatable” prices. Pro Broadband packages include integrated features such as hybrid routers that automatically switch to Vodafone’s 4G mobile network if the fixed-line connection goes down, Wi-Fi boosters that guarantee connection in every room of a house, and access to WiFi Xperts.

CityFibre Pro Broadband packages are available in its nationwide roll-out locations such as those recently revealed, including Middlesbrough, Preston and Peterborough. The provider is also part of the Building Digital UK (BDUK) programme, which was launched in 2018 with £200m of UK government investment with the aim of rolling out FTTP broadband services to rural parts of the country.