Cambridge, Portsmouth and Southampton added to CityFibre high-speed network

Purchase of Redcentric adds another 137km to firm's fibre network

CityFibre has acquired fibre network firm Redcentric for £5m, giving it access to core network infrastructure in Cambridge, Portsmouth and Southampton.

The total length of fibre networks across these territories is 137km, and the move extends CityFibre's footprint to 40 cities nationwide.

The deal will also expand CityFibre's coverage in other cities where it already had some presence, including Nottingham, Derby and Northampton.

Under the agreement Redcentric will lease back access to the dark fibre in the network for £4.5m, effectively becoming a major customer of CityFibre's.

CityFibre has been keen to position itself as a rival to BT Openreach in the wholesale broadband market, claiming that the company's fibre-first approach is far better suited to the long-term digital infrastructure future of the UK.

CEO Greg Mesch used the acquisition to reiterate this message. "Once again we've shown that underused legacy fibre assets can find a new home to flourish in CityFibre's wholesale shared infrastructure model," he said.

"We're very pleased to have secured a deal structure which benefits our new partner and us, and we look forward to working with Redcentric across our broader national footprint."

The deal is the latest in a string of moves by CityFibre to expand its network. The company will soon add Milton Keynes and Reading to its network, and announced a partnership with Gigaclear that will cover more rural locations with fibre.

The deal comes as BT has picked telecoms equipment giants Nokia and Huawei to start upgrading its Openreach infrastructure to handle the firm's G.fast technology.

This could boost copper connections to speeds as high as 330Mbps as part of BT's goal to provide speeds of at least 100Mbps to 12 million homes and businesses by 2020.