We endeavour to be consistent across all the full fibre networks we track and our curation of the data we hold means we see a lot of different build stages for full fibre, but it is rare to see areas flagged as fully ready to order and return to an almost there message.
A week ago CityFibre announced its network was live to over 1 million premises and our mapping of their footprint was considerably smaller at 658,868 premises mapped to the various retailers on the network. We subsequently learnt that Slough, Reading and Dundee were missing from our maps and therefore worked to get them added ASAP in addition to ongoing mapping updates for places like Paisley, Ipswich. In the subsequent six days we have managed to increase our audited footprint to 698,311 premises and cities live Coventry are seeing a good few addition premises, and to a smaller extent places like Inverness, Portsmouth and Doncaster.
The reason for this news article is for Slough and Reading something very unexpected has happened, we were at the end of last week seeing postcodes mapped as live for IDNet (plus Vodafone in Reading) but now messaging is consistently saying “Full Fibre is almost here! We’re in the process of making our network live.” and to register. If this was 1 postcode in a 1,000 we had added to an area we would concede that Andrew had pressed a wrong button but the reverse appears consistent. We have left the postcodes on our maps and database for now but if this reverse of fortunes continues into the next week we will remove the CityFibre availability from those postcodes. That will shrink the CityFibre footprint by some 4,000 premises, the impact on the UK FTTP figures will be minimised by the amount of overlap with Openreach in Slough and pretty much zero impact on Gigabit figures as Slough has just seen the switch on of Virgin Media DOCSIS 3.1.
As announced last week, our ‘Ready For Service’ network footprint has now comfortably exceeded 1 million homes. As a wholesaler, this entire footprint is now live and available to our retail partners to market and serve customers.
Because we are continually signing and on-boarding new retail partners however, some areas are only now starting to appear in their availability checkers. We believe this is the prime reason for any discrepancy found with thinkbroadband’s data.
As loyal readers of thinkbroadband and users of its data, we are working closely with them to provide full visibility of our network’s reach and status. We are not only confident of our progress but proud, and we look forward to playing an ever larger part in the drive for nationwide Full Fibre coverage.
John Franklin, Chief Technology Information Officer at CityFibre
We could easily have said nothing and quietly dropped the postcodes from our maps, but we know that someone would spot this and its better to be upfront about these things and it is a good illustration of the issues we see in tracking the various roll-outs. This is not the first time we’ve seen quirks in data but the interest in full fibre is so much more these days due to the desire for faster reliable services.
Fingers crossed the roll-out will soon be back on track in Reading and Slough with availability appearing and we can build our map of the footprint in the area and help people to get their first FTTP connection.
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This mornings press releases by CityFibre and Vodafone cover the Slough and Reading question and a lot more besides. Ordering opens tomorrow for those locations.
https://newscentre.vodafone.co.uk/press-release/new-cityfibre-deal-become-britains-new-full-fibre-broadband-leader/ and https://www.cityfibre.com/news/vodafone-anchors-cityfibres-nationwide-full-fibre-rollout-to-8-million-homes/
It was obvious it was a lie. I posted on the story at the time that Newcastle was one of their main phase 1 projects and yet in all of 2021 not a single new property has went live according to Thinkbroadbands map. The west end all went live in late 2020 and all throughout 2021 they’ve been building in the east end and central Newcastle yet not a single new live property. Other people said the same about their phase 1 cities too.
Openreach has hit Newcastle and they are going through street by street in a few days and then setting them to live. Cityfibre are going to seriously miss their chance
Not everybody’s data is correct, including Thinkbroadbands. I highlighted to this site several years back that Virgin is not available to the area where I live. It still shows that it is. I did get a response which disagreed with me, but to be fair, if I choose to sell my home this shows me as having access to it, so I am fine with that.
Cannot recall every inquiry, but as we do postcode level it is based on the majority being able to order. It may be that Virgin has changed their mind too now so worth a revisit.
The Reading and Slough areas are showing as live again, but with Vodafone and Vodafone+TalkTalk in some cases, no mention of IDNet now
Various other areas have been expanded and Solihull is a new area on the maps at https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#10/52.2589/-1.7303/gigafast/
Why does it take so long once all the cabling has been laid for it to be switched on?
The cables in my area was installed just over 2 months ago and still no details when it will be available.
I noticed in my area they did not dig up the paths so each house has its own port could this be due to they are going to use the openreach underground ducts to feed each persons home this is how the current telephone works?
andrew it may be worth looking into the announcement on the 11th November about vodafone’s new deal with cityfibre, you noted since that date idnet no longer shows up, in addition someone reported on the forum zen has stopped advertising cityfibre on their website.
Reading and Slough is showing up as Vodafone, but isp such as Zen and IDNet still show up in other areas.
Don’t believe Zen has stopped selling over cityfibre but rather some quirks in checker databases are showing up.